Students worldwide: check your eligibility for free Microsoft Office

Microsoft has been a tireless proponent of education -- the company has many schools on its operating system and Office suite, sometimes at very big discounts. But the best discount of all is always "free", which is exactly what some students will pay for Office. The software giant has even instituted a way for students to check their eligibility.

This comes on the heels of New York City announcing that its students and teachers will be running Microsoft's Office programs. The city isn't alone either, as many other educational bastions move to the platform.

According to the Office 365 team "that includes the 5.5 million eligible students in Australia, the nearly 5 million eligible students in Germany, 7 million more in Brazil, 1.3 million at Anadolu University in Turkey, every student in Hong Kong and millions more".

Checking to see if you're eligible is now a worldwide thing -- it was previously US only. To check availability students and teachers can follow a link -- students head for office.com/getoffice365, while teachers should visit office.com/teachers.

Microsoft points out that once you have successfully registered there are plenty of benefits.

• The latest version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Access and Publisher installed on up to five PCs or Macs and up to five mobile devices like iPad, Android and Windows tablets.
• 1TB of storage on OneDrive you can use to store and share all your documents across all your devices.
• Office Online for in-browser editing, collaboration and co-authoring.

So, if you are a student or teacher anywhere in the world you can head over and check your eligibility now. You may just score yourself a free version of Microsoft Office.

Image Credit: Poznyakov / Shutterstock