If students want Microsoft Office 365 for free without jumping hoops with a school’s IT department – as in waiting for the school to create, activate, and order a license for an Office 365 account, then it’s currently a good news/bad news scenario for you. The good news On Monday, Microsoft that students age 13 and older located in the U.S. Can skip the IT department and sign up for Office 365 for Students.

Powerful tools in Office 365 Education enable 21st century learning and discovery—both within the classroom and beyond. Office 365 Education enables teachers and students to create and collaborate in real time, on any browser and across your devices. Office 365 Education is free for schools, teachers, and students.

Previously, it was on the school to initiate the service, create an account for the student, and then order the Office 365 license for that account. [ Keep up with. Give your career a boost with. . ] The new self-serve model allows students to go to and enter a valid school-provided email address. Qualified students are then given the following for free: • The latest versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access and Publisher • Installation on up to five PCs or Macs, and Office apps on other mobile devices, including Windows tablets and iPad • 1 Terabyte of OneDrive cloud storage • Office Online If you aren’t a cloud hater, then 1 TB of free storage is pretty sweet! Microsoft rolled this out to U.S.

Students on Sept. 22, but will expand the self-serve model worldwide later in 2014. Starting on Dec. 1, faculty and staff will also have access to for free, so teachers will be using the same versions of Office with the same features as students.

Teachers in the U.S. Can sign up starting in October.

The biggest disclaimer for all of this is that schools must have “purchased Office organization-wide for all faculty/staff via the.” There is no mention of how long the free subscription to Office 365 for Students is valid. Licensing programs come in subscription or perpetual flavors. It seems logical that Microsoft would require students to re-validate their.edu email address every year or so. Otherwise, students would have Office for free for life, and there’s no way Microsoft would do that. Mac and windows compatible format.

[ ] Allowing students to sign up themselves removes “unnecessary friction and delay,” Microsoft said. Except after the massive surge in students jumping on free Office 365, the delay did not go away and an unknown number of students were unable to activate their new Office 365 for Students. The bad news Yesterday afternoon on the Microsoft Office 365 community forum, Microsoft started a thread for “.” It currently has 202 replies and is 14 pages long, as the self-serve model is apparently not activating and making frustrated students want to pull out their hair. Microsoft originally advised students who could not activate their Office 365 installation to wait 10 minutes and try activating again using the same email address and password. If that didn’t work, then students were encouraged to post their question. Most replies dealt with activation issues, as people were getting an error stating that their school email address wasn't 'associated with this Office product. To activate this install, please sign in with the account associated with your product.'