12 year old daughter needs Word for her homework.

She doesn’t have a school email etc so as far as I can see she won’t qualify to download it for free.

As usual it’s a massive panic so I have to do it this weekend, the easiest way I can see is through the MS website but it’s £79.

Are there any other cheaper/official places to buy it from?

Does she actually need Word or could she use Open Office until you can get a student version of Word sorted?

….or google docs

Google Drive/Docs might be an option too. Can export to Word format.

Google Docs is another good shout, if all you need is to get a doc written this weekend.

That said, if the school is anything like my daughters, its Word they ‘teach’ them to use.

Office 365 is £5.99 a month-

Google Docs – can be saved as a Word document I think?

you can sign up for the free online version…
https://products.office.com/en-gb/office-online/documents-spreadsheets-presentations-office-online

It’s not as fully featured as the downloadable office 365 app, but probably good enough.

Thanks everyone.

As cody mentioned, school have her firmly hooked on Word so anything else would be alien to her. I’d help her with google docs etc but my IT skills are limited to logging on here.

After I managed to tip her out of bed and prise her phone from her hands, it turns out she does have a school email/login but it looks like her school isn’t registered with MS.

Might go for the 365 option as it’s simple, cheaper and fully installed.

Thanks again.

365 is worth a look but Google Docs is simple and easy to use so give that a go to. It also means you can never forget your homework.

Google is free but MS is at a small cost (and better for a number of reasons) If the school has a preference for MS then its likely they are using education licensing. This means they pay a fixed cost per annum per FTE. For that they have close to zero cost licensing for students and staff meaning giving students both cloud and downloadable copies of Office is free, as well as OneDrive and SharePoint storage. Email etc comes bundled in.
If they are not offering the software for free then they should not be insisting that she uses it. I would ask them why when free alternatives are available.

it turns out she does have a school email/login but it looks like her school isn’t registered with MS.

How do you know its a school one but not with MS?

Do you have an office 365 subscription at work? Each person can have up to 5 installs, of which work is 1, so we can have 4 personal installs.

Might be worth investigating…

Just get LibreOffice. Yes, its a bit different from MS Word, but any young folk will soon figure out how to use it.

Office 365 is either £79.00 one off or £7.99 per month. That gives you 5 users and 1TB of storage each. Absolute bargain!

Office is free to use online.
https://products.office.com/en-gb/office-online/

If your workplace (or maybe her school?) is registered with MS HUP, you can buy it for a tenner.
https://www.microsofthup.com/hupuk/home.aspx?country_id=GB

Failing that, as a student she’s entitled to a hefty discount over retail.
http://www.software4students.co.uk/t/brands/microsoft-office-2016

And I’d be questioning whether she actually needs full Word for her homework. For just banging out an essay, Wordpad is perfectly serviceable, produces Word-compatible documents and is already installed on her / your computer.

How do you know its a school one but not with MS?

If I go here https://products.office.com/en-gb/student/office-in-education and enter her email @her_school it tells me her school is not registered.

Cougar, following your link and putting my works email address in it looks like our company may well be registered. I had asked Jim at head office our IT department the other day and he they said ‘they’d look into it’, which basically means no.

Will let her have a go on Wordpad but for the sake of £5.99 a month I can always go for 365.

Thanks.

Cougar, following your link and putting my works email address in it looks like our company may well be registered.

Sod what Jim says; if your email address works on the HUP site it’s not ‘may well be’, it is! Just get it installed. Jim won’t know in all likelihood as Jim works in IT support (a noble profession) and this participation will have been agreed in a totally different department.

(HUP user and very pleased with it 🙂 )

I have HUP for Mac and Windows – costs £10 each.

If you put your work email in and get an email to work, then it works!

If all free avenues fail, and Libre Office or Open Office are both not suitable, then software geeks are selling for £69

https://softwaregeeks.co.uk/product/microsoft-office-2016-home-student-windows-1-pc/

Enter the code SEPTEMBER20 to get 20% off to make it £55…

I have HUP for Mac and Windows – costs £10 each.

If you put your work email in and get an email to work, then it works!

It requires a code though 🙁

I’d ask ‘Jim’ for the code, but I really cba with 15 minutes of bs excuses why I can’t have it.

There are lots of product keys available for office 2016 (which includes word) for about £7. A well known auction site can be searched for office 2016 product key with a lot of results. Just use the key and the official download link. Each time the key authenticates in microsofts servers without fault.

Someone at work was on about this the other day; apparently you can buy it off ebay for three quid.

😆

Cheers David. May have a look.

Gone for the £5.99 pm option, it gets her going for the time being.

What Cougar said. Schools often have student Office 365 accounts. Or valid school information can get you educational pricing. Though to be fair the full retail license of Office 365 isn’t too much at £60/year for one account or £80/year for 5 in the family.

I feel compelled to say that Word 2016 is pretty bloated and unfriendly at times. And tables are still awful in Word even after nearly 30 years of development.

Open Office and the like are just like Office 2013 if I remember correctly. Unglamorous but more than good enough for getting familiar with the most important Word functions.