Walkthrough: Microsoft Office for Free (Legally)

As the start of school approaches, many students find themselves shelling out as much as $300 for Microsoft Office 2003. This Walkthrough will provide an in-depth way to LEGALLY use Microsoft Office for free. I am not ashamed to admit that I have now been using Office for almost a year through this method. Walkthrough after the Jump.

Step 1:
Go to www.microsoft.com and enter “Microsoft Office Trial” in the Search Box that can be found in the upper-right hand corner of the screen and click Search.

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Step 2:
Click on the first search result listed. It should be entitled “Microsoft Office System Trial Software.”

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Step 3:
Click the “Download” button listed directly to the right of the “Office Standard Edition 2003″ label.

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Step 4:
Fill out your personal information and email address and click Submit. You will be directed to a page with a 25 character Product Key and a download link. Download the “Office.exe” file and start the install. Enter your Product Key when prompted and complete the install.

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Step 5:
The first time you run any of the Office programs (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Outlook) you will be prompted to activate the software - do so. Once you activate Office you have to close and re-open the Application you were using to start your “trial.” The trial lasts for 60 days.

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Step 6:
After 60 days of use, Office will prevent you from creating or editing any documents. When this happens all you have to do is uninstall Office via the Add/Remove Programs option of the Control Panel in Windows XP. Then you just restart your computer and repeat this entire process, downloading a new Office.exe file, obtaining a new Product Key and, like magic, you will have another 2 months of Office FOR FREE!!

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I hope you all find this as useful as I do - Richard