That said, they are still great for quick editing and viewing documents. For example, if someone has sent you a Word document that you need to look at and you do not want to pay for the full version of the software, then you can easily get to it using your phone. Alternatively, if you just need something to make simple and short Word documents, with basic formatting, the mobile phone app will work just fine.
Get a family member to pay
You can get deals on family plans pretty much anywhere, from Apple to Spotify. The same goes for a Microsoft 365 subscription, so if you’ve eager to get all the benefits of Word (and Excel and PowerPoint) for free, then consider asking someone else in your family to pay for the software.
Check Microsoft 365 plans page for the latest prices. At the time of writing, you could get an individual subscription for $ 69.99 per year or a family subscription for $ 99.99 per year. That family subscription covers up to six people, each of whom can install Office apps on up to five devices.
You may need to use your persuasive skills to the absolute maximum to get a relative to pay for you to access Microsoft Office without paying anything – but you may have a particularly generous family around you, or you may win back in in another way. At the very least, it means you get Microsoft Word for significantly less money if you share the $ 100 a year fee in six different ways.
Use an alternative
It may seem like cheating to tell you to use an alternative in a guide on how to use Microsoft Word for free, but keep in mind that many of these alternatives are now quite comfortable with handling the same .docx file format that Word does , and anyone you send or receive files from does not need to know that you are not using Word. That means you do not miss out if the rest of your colleagues use Word and you do not.
It’s there, of course Google Docs, which is completely free to use and runs inside a web browser as well as on mobile in app form. Although it does not quite have the reach and range of features that Microsoft Word has – especially when it comes to some layout formats and options for longer documents – you can access it from any computer, and document sharing is very straightforward.
When it comes to desktop software, there is the venerable OpenOffice, which includes a word processing program as well as several other programs that you do not have to pay for. The Office suite is available for both Windows and macOS. If you’re on a Mac, there are also Pages to consider, which is Apple’s free word processing program.