How to get MS Office for an A Level Student

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We’re getting DS a laptop - what is the best way to get MS Office? Is it all by subscription? Is there a way of A level students getting a discount?

Don’t know if there is a student discount but there are corporate ones. I work for a large PLC and get a discount.

Do you need that specific program? You can get OpenOffice for free which does a lot of the same things.

When DD1 was at college, I think she accessed it all online through the student portal. I don't think she actually had MS Office on her laptop? That said, there is usually a 'student' option for a lower price.

Will they not have access through the college via a Microsoft account for their emails ? If so the can access office through the apps. My sons have this with school

Yes these days is a subscription to office 365 and it’s all online and cloud based ie you don’t need to install anything from discs - not like the good old day!. I believe there is a discounted student version. A quick google will tell you. Some new laptops come with a subscription included.

So much is coming up on Google it’s difficult to see the wood for the trees! But I think he needs to create an Microsoft account with is college .ac.uk email address and subscribe through there.

It’s the voice to text functionality of Word that we’re really interested in. DS is a massive vocaliser, and brain dumps what he’s learnt everyday on whoever will listen! If we could capture that in writing… brilliant.

How compatible is MS Office with Open Office? Would OO open a spreasheet created in MS Office properly?

I use the free online version

You can normally get it free through the college or university.
They will have aweb address that yourDC can access and put in their uni/college/school email address to verify it.

Yes. I use Open Office, it does everything MS Office does.

There is an official free student licence
from Microsoft (for participating organisations)
Or there can be a student discount

For Office 365 it is by subscription (which can be paid monthly or as an annual one off)
Subscriptions always cover the current version of office

For a one off you can buy Office 2024, and keep it forever (or as long as it works on computers of the future)

For free you can just set up a Microsoft account for the online apps and some hosting space

Businesses sometimes have a licence that ‘entitles’ staff to buy a discounted copy (you register via a link with your work email address)
I used to do that, buying a discounted copy of the desktop software and combine that with the free online and phone apps
But now it’s subscription based the discount is not worth it on a personal licence so I have a standard subscription (it may be worth the
discount on a family basis depending on the number of users who need more than the free elements)

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/education/products/office

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/college-student-pricing

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/buy/microsoft-365

If a free or cheap option doesn’t work for their email address etc then OpenOffice should be compatible (or Google equivalents), and when required the free online versions can be used
But note that online apps don’t have identical capabilities to the full desktop versions

It will depend on their needs - eg compatibles and online versions would be sufficient for general documents, but if their is anything technical or advanced then they may find they have issues and/or if using different software their tutors may not be able to assist

At the uni I work at students get Office 365 to download or they can access the web version. They need an email address that ties in with the college eg [email protected]