If you want to use Microsoft Office and apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint for Mac but without having to pay a subscription, here we show you how to use Microsoft Office on a Mac for free.
Limited Offer: You can currently get 81% off a Microsoft Office For Mac Home & Business Lifetime License for $39.99 (normally $219.99) or 81% off 2 Lifetime Licenses for $79.99 (normally $439.98) for a limited period.
Here you’ll learn how to use Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Sharepoint, OneDrive and other MS Office apps for free in macOS including on Apple Silicon M1 Macs and M2 Macs.
This will save you $150 in a one off purchase of Microsoft Office for Mac or anything up to $100 per year for a subscription.
Office 365 is now known as Microsoft 365 and will be referred as such here as Microsoft is currently rebranding the entire Microsoft Office line as Microsoft 365.
Note that Microsoft Visio for Mac, Publisher For Mac, Project For Mac and Access For Mac are not available in either Office 365 or Microsoft 365.
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Is There A Free Version of Microsoft Office For Mac?
There is no free version of Microsoft Office for Mac although there are a few workarounds to use it for free on macOS which we will show you here.
You can however use Microsoft Outlook for Mac for free now but not the rest of the Microsoft Office suite.
The closest thing to a free version of Microsoft Office on Mac is Apple’s iWork which includes Pages, Numbers and Keynote.
With this in mind, here’s how to use Microsoft Office For Mac For Free in 2022.
1. Download Microsoft Office For Mac Education Edition
If you’re in education, you can download the student version of Microsoft Office. This is because many educational institutions have paid for an educational license which can be used by students.
Many educational institutions pay for Office 365 plans, allowing students and teachers to download the software for free.
Alternatively, you can get student discounts on most Microsoft software.
2. Sign-up For The Microsoft Office For Mac Free Trial
You can sign up for a one-month free trial of Microsoft Office for Mac which enables you to use all Microsoft Office applications for free during that period.
You will need to enter your credit card details but can cancel your subscription at any time—even so that you don’t get billed.
The free trial of MS Office for Mac allows you to download the desktop version of Microsoft Office for Mac and gives you full access to the Microsoft 365 Home Plan
This includes Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote and 1TB of OneDrive storage in OneDrive.
If you’re a business you can also sign-up for a 30 day free trial of Office 365 ProPlus.
3. Use Office.com Online
Nowadays you can use Microsoft Office.com for free in a web browser. However, the online version of Office isn’t as complete as the desktop version and does not work offline.
You can though still open and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents in any browser on your Mac.
Simply go to Office.com and sign up for a free Microsoft account to start using Word, Excel, or PowerPoint for free on your Mac.
You can also upload files from your Mac into Office.com which will be saved in Microsoft OneDrive.
4. Use a Microsoft Home Plan Invite
If you know a friend or relative that already has a Microsoft 365 Home plan they can share it with up to five other people.
You can simply request that they send you can invite via email in the Office Sharing page in their Microsoft account.
Once invited you can sign-in and download Microsoft Office for Mac which includes 1TB of OneDrive storage.
Alternatively, you could agree to split the $100 Microsoft Office subscription fee between you can 5 others which works out a lot cheaper than buying Office for Mac on its own.
5. Use Microsoft Office On iOS For Free
If you’ve already got an iOS device such as an iPhone or iPad then you can use Word, Excel and PowerPoint on iOS for free.
This is only for non-commercial use though which means non-business related and only for personal reasons.
You can download Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook for free from the iOS App Store on your iPad or iPhone.
You can create, edit and print documents for free although you will need to create a Microsoft ID to do so first.
Note that unfortunately, this doesn’t work on the iPad Pro as the free version for Microsoft Office for iOS does not support screens bigger than 10.2 inches.
You can however use Microsoft Office on the iPad Pro with a Microsoft Office 365 subscription.
Hi there everyone. Well here we go. I purchased this product a few months ago. I had recently switched to MAC from Windows and was looking to use Microsoft office programs on my new MAC. Any way I contacted the supplier and asked if the product was going to work on my new MAC M1 Ultra with Monterey. They said sure no problem. So I went ahead and purchased it and got the code and downloaded the package. Well, right away after downloading the program I realized that something was wrong. The download was an executable. Being new to Mac, I was not sure but realized that MAC did not use “.exe” files but “.dmg” files. I tried and there was no way to run it. It was obviously designed for MAC’s with intel chips not the M1 brand Apple Silicon. I contacted the company and told them the problem. Being sales people they did not have a clue. I talked to the next level people and even tech help and finally got the idea across about the issue and finally was able to get a full refund but took a few days. So be aware.. I just looked at the link and it still does not say anything about M1 and M2 apple silicon chips.
It sounds like you downloaded the PC version and tried to run it on a Mac which won’t work unless you’ve installed Windows on your Mac.
Microsoft Office has been updated to work on the latest Apple Silicon Macs so there’s no problem running it on M1 and M2 Macs.