Got a new laptop a few weeks back having had the last one 14 years. We didn’t get round to getting any software. Now we need to get school learning downloads (all in word i think) for 2 kids!

It’s got MS windows installed on it but keeps asking us to activate outlook. I think that means we need to buy MS office and use a key to load it?

Any suggestions of how to get the access as cheap as possible to the MS word we need?

Office 365 is about £80 a year I think, let’s you use it on 3 (might be 5) laptops/PCs.

Might be other licensing options too, been a while since I looked

Just want it on 1 laptop. I recall we got it for students last time (as my wife was one).

Just use Google docs equivalent. Free for home users.

Don’t panic. There are free alternatives.

Have a look at LibreOffice.
https://www.libreoffice.org/

You can get a 30 day trial of Office 365 and then pay just 5.99 a month to keep using it on a month by month basis.
You can also use the online versions of Word for free.

Another vote for Google Sheets and Docs, very easy to use.

Open Office does it for me. Seems to talk nicely to all the MS Office stuff that we use at school. Free

Not hung up on the MS stuff, just want to be able to see, save and edit the school sheets. Where do i go to download googledocs to the laptop? I am a total luddite.

You can use Microsoft office online for free using your Microsoft log in. Just click through the buy it stuff..

Typically you can buy a licence for a fiver on eBay. AFAIK (I’m happy to be corrected) they’re legal, usually unused licences from businesses or something.

Open Office or Libre Office are all just as good. Google Docs works too.

Email their teacher and see if the kids get a free licence through school first. You could try getting them to log in to office 365 with their school email and password.

Office 365 is free for students

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

The alternatives are all very well, but I very much doubt you’ll get any sympathy off the school when something doesn’t work or display right.

Libreoffice for me. You can save documents in the various Office formats. Perhaps the main limitation is you will struggle to run VBA macros. So the answer, as ever, is – it depends.

We got this a few weeks ago

Microsoft Office 2019 Home and Student for Windows 10 (Instant Delivery)

Also looked at this for a year subscription

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8837505

Please don’t email the teacher. They’ve got enough shit to figure out just now and even at the best of times the odds they’d know if pupils qualify for a free license are minimal.. Loads of great advice above.

Typically you can buy a licence for a fiver on eBay. AFAIK (I’m happy to be corrected) they’re legal, usually unused licences from businesses or something

They aren’t

Depending on where you work, you may be able to get a discount on the office products with a home use licence. I got mine this way (just before it changed, I bought a full licence for next to nothing, think it’s just a discount on the yearly licence fee now)

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/home-use-program

Libre office/open office are also good

The alternatives are all very well, but I very much doubt you’ll get any sympathy off the school when something doesn’t work or display right

Google Docs will open and save as Word but realistically doesn’t everyone submit stuff as PDFs now?
The platform is pretty irrelevant.

Try downloading office 365, then when it asks you to login use whatever your work e-mail and password is. Worked for me. Or your kids school login. Only downside of that is it brings up dead links to all my work files on my home laptop (which can’t connect to the work servers).

Word (and I think excel?) docs will open in an online editor (a bit like google docs).

I’d steer clear of google docs/libre/open office, they’re great but they won’t run macors and the formulas are different in excel so any maths/science type stuff using those won’t work, and kids may as well learn to use the software they’d actually use in the real working world, which inevitably is MS Office.

Lots of schools are using MS Team to share lessons etc which is a feature of Office 365, if that’s the case you’ll need proper 365 account, but the good news is most schools (High Schools at least) have got free licenses for students.

Check your schools website.