That said, they’re still great for quick edits and for viewing documents. If, for example, someone has sent you a Word document that you need to look at, and you don’t want to pay for the full version of the software, then you can easily get at it using your phone. Alternatively, if you just need something to create 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 just about everywhere, from Apple to Spotify. The same is true for a Microsoft 365 subscription, so if you’re keen to get all of the benefits of Word (and Excel and PowerPoint) free of charge, then you might consider asking someone else in your family to pay for the software.
Check the Microsoft 365 plans page for the latest pricing. 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, who can each install the Office apps on up to five devices.
You may have to use your powers of persuasion to the absolute maximum to get a relative to pay for you to access Microsoft Office without paying anything—but you might have a particularly generous family around you, or you may be able to return the favor in some other way. At the very least, it means you’re getting Microsoft Word for significantly less money if you split the $100-a-year fee six different ways.
Use an Alternative
It may seem like cheating to tell you to use an alternative in a guide to how to use Microsoft Word for free, but bear in mind that a lot of these alternatives are now perfectly comfortable handling the same .docx file format that Word does, and anyone you’re sending to or getting files from doesn’t have to know you’re not using Word. That means you don’t miss out if the rest of your colleagues use Word and you don’t.
There is of course Google Docs, which is completely free to use and runs inside a web browser as well as on mobile in app form. While it doesn’t quite have the reach and range of features that Microsoft Word does—particularly when it comes to some layout formats and options for longer documents—you can access it from any computer, and sharing documents is very straightforward.
When it comes to desktop software, there’s the venerable OpenOffice, which includes a word processor as well as multiple other applications that you don’t have to pay for. The office suite is available for both Windows and macOS. If you’re on a Mac, there’s also Pages to consider, which is Apple’s free word processor.