Microsoft Offering Free Office 365 Subscriptions to Students Worldwide

The Redmond giant via its Office Blogs confirmed the news and said, "Millions of students around the world are eligible for free Office from their school and today [Tuesday] we are announcing that we've made it easy for all eligible students globally to sign up themselves to get Office 365 and install free Office." Countries and regions where the Office 365 subscription service is available can be checked on the listprovided by Microsoft.

Under the scheme, students once signed up for their free Office 365 subscriptions get the latest versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Access and Publisher, which can be installed on up to five PCs or Macs and even up to five mobile devices (such as iPad, Android and Windows tablets). With the free Office 365 subscription, Microsoft also offers 1TB of storage on OneDrive and Office Online access to eligible students.

(Also see: Do You Really Need to Subscribe to Office 365 When So Much Is Free?)

The company in its blog notes that Hebrew and Arabic languages will be available mid-March while the self-sign-up will not available in China.

The self-sign-up is now available for students worldwide and can be done by visiting the Office 365 for Students (or Office 365 for Teachers) page and registering with a valid email provided by the school. The company further adds, "Students getting Office at no additional cost to schools is a benefit Microsoft provides to education institutions that buy Office for faculty and staff. That means teachers can also sign up and enjoy all the benefits of Office connected to a cloud service."

Last month, Microsoft confirmed that the next version of Office for desktop would be called Office 2016, and has been set for general availability "in the second half of 2015."