Microsoft Office provides important productivity functions that many of us need to use on a daily basis, but at times the cost just seems so prohibitive! Thankfully though, you can buy Microsoft Office for cheap if you know where to look.
Here are some tips and ideas for getting a totally-legal discount off of the world’s most popular productivity suite:
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Option 1: Buy the college student version
80% Discount
Are you a full-time or even part-time college student? Buy Office 2010 Professional Academic for $100. It has the same programs as the $500 Professional edition (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, OneNote, Publisher, and Access). That’s an 80% discount!
There’s just one catch: you’re only allowed to use it for academic purposes. If you just need Office for university work, this could be the edition for you. Note that if your university has a license agreement with Microsoft, you may be able to get Office for even cheaper. Ask around at your university’s bookstore for more info before buying.
If you’re not a college student, there are still other options for buying cheap Microsoft Office…
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Option 2: Buy a key card
25-40% Discount
You can save 25-40% off Office 2010′s retail price by downloading the trial version of Office and then purchasing a discounted Office key card
to unlock the trial.
The only downside is that you don’t get a physical disc or the fancy packaging (which is why it’s cheaper), so if your computer ever has a total crash, you’ll need to redownload the Office trial so you can use your key card to unlock it again. But for the major cost savings, it’s worth that small potential hassle.
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Option 3: Use the free online versions
Free but limitedIf you need only the very basics of Microsoft Office, check out Office Live, Microsoft’s free offering of online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. As an added plus, you can access your Office Live documents from any computer with Internet access.
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Option 4: Buy a Family Pack
3 for $150
The disc version of Office 2010 Home and Student
is a “Family Pack” that can be installed on up to 3 computers in your household. Since the box is $150, that works out to $50 per license. However, note that the Home and Student edition is limited to non-commercial use only. If you’re looking to buy cheap Microsoft Office for your whole family to use, Home and Student is a great choice.
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Option 5: Buy an old version
Up to 60% offIf you can do without the latest features in the newest Office release, you may be able to find older versions (like Office 2007 or Office 2003) at a discount at online stores like Amazon.com.
Bonus Tip: If your computer came with Microsoft Works or Microsoft Works Suite, you may be eligible for Office’s upgrade pricing. This means that, using software that likely came free with your computer, you could save another 20-40% off an old version of Office. (This method only works for buying old versions of Office, since Microsoft discontinued upgrade pricing for the latest version of Office.)
When combined with the discounts that stores will likely put on old versions anyway, this could represent some substantial savings. For example, as of this writing, you can buy Office 2007 Ultimate Upgrade
on Amazon for 62% off the original pricing of the full version of the suite.
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Bonus Tip: Use a free alternative
Office isn’t the only productivity suite out there. These free alternatives may be worth checking out. Look into Google Docs (which is similar to Office Live but has been around longer) or LibreOffice (a free, full-fledged Microsoft Office alternative). Both can export or save to Microsoft Word’s DOC format.
what about free open office type software – is that just like Word or Excel and compatible and easy to use if familiar with MS Office? I only need it for school. thank you
@sally: OpenOffice.org and its close cousin LibreOffice have interfaces that are fairly similar to those of Office 2003 and prior (i.e. they use menus, rather than the Ribbon interface of Office 2007 and later), but there are definitely some differences. They also have fewer features than Office does. Both OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice can open and save *.doc files (which all versions of Word support), and can open *.docx files (which is the default format for Word 2007 and later). Since OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice are free, you can download one or both and see for yourself if they can meet your needs.
This was very, very helpful. Thank you so much for clearly showing all the options
Thanks that was helpful
I love the features in Word from my )ffice2000 Premium Package. I tried to upgrade to 2003, but couldn’t use any hyperlinks. I keep a doc of ad links to write my current puppy ad on so all is in one place. I had to drop 2003 because msg. kept saying the version wasn’t compatible with hyperlinks. However, I loved the improved Outlook 2003 over the 2000 vers. But every time i tried to install outlook only, the 2003 upgrade erased all 2000 software and replaced it. Thank God I use ‘Restore’ a lot.
My question is that I’d like to know if Wood 2007 uses hyperlinks. I’d buy that pack and upgrade everything (except the defunct Photodraw) if I know I could be as productive. My left arm was amputated & reattached but there is no individual finger movement. Anything I can do to shorten my tasks minimizes the arthritis pain in my good hand, which includes keeping a page of clickable links along with notes re pix & cost. I just traded ‘up’ my 2000 computer for a used 2005 Dell & will be switching over to high speed from dial-up. I found a lot of iold programs don’t work well with this XP-Pro and would like to stay ahead of surprise software death that’s important to my day.
I will understand if you don’t know about the 2007 version. Thanks anyway!
I have Office 2007 (licensed), will I still be able to access Office Live?
Yes, you can use Office Live regardless of whether or not you own Office.