Marie Bagwell
Staff Writer
On Jan. 29, Cameron students received an email from the ITS Helpdesk informing them that they are eligible to receive Microsoft Office 365 for free.
The Student Advantage is a benefit that allows eligible students to get Office 365 ProPlus for free. However, it is up to each campus to launch the deal.
According to the Microsoft Store, Office 365 comes with a price tag of $99.99 a year. The suite includes Word, Excel, Publisher, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, Access, OneDrive and Skype. Each user also has the capability of downloading their copy of Office 365 on up to 5 PCs or Macs, 5 tablets (Windows, iPad and Android) and 5 phones, according to the Microsoft products website.
This offer for Office 365 is not exclusive to Cameron University. According to Microsoft, the company began offering the Student Advantage about a year ago.
Each user also has the capability of downloading their copy of Office 365 on up to 5 PCs or Macs, 5 tablets (Windows, iPad and Android) and 5 phones, according to the Microsoft products website.
Being able to work from home, school or work and having access to one terabyte of cloud storage allows students ease of use across multiple devices.
The first email from ITS department sent out to students provided instructions to obtain the free suite:
- Email to support@cameron.edu with the subject containing “Requesting Office 365,” and the body of the email containing requestor’s student name and identification number.
- After ITS sends an email in return with a link to download the subscription, set up a username consisting of first and last initials followed by the student’s CU ID.
- Once students sign in with their current student ID and password, the installation process begins.
- Once the installation is complete, sign in to take an optional tour of Office 365 ProPlus.
An additional mobile download allows for access to Office Mobile and online use of collaboration in OneDrive, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.
Students wishing to download the mobile version would follow these steps:
- Click a link to go to Office Mobile in their online application store.
- After clicking download and accept, commence the download and installation process, which takes approximately one minute for the 67 megabyte file.
- Once the download completes, sign in with a current student email and password to enable use of Office Mobile. As long as users are an actively enrolled student, they will have free access to the subscription of Office 365 ProPlus.