Office Home and Student: Word, Excel and PowerPoint for Life

What Office Home and Student really includes

Office Home and Student is the entry-level edition of Microsoft’s office suite. It brings together the three applications people actually use at home and during their studies: Word for reports, essays and letters, Excel for tables, budgets and calculations, and PowerPoint for presentations. The 2016 and 2024 versions add OneNote for note-taking.

Knowing what this edition does not include is just as useful, because that is often where the right choice is made:

• No Outlook: your email stays in your browser or in the free mail app of Windows.
• No Access or Publisher, which are reserved for the professional editions.
• One perpetual license for one computer, with no subscription and no annual payment.
• No extra cloud storage: you keep the free 5 GB of OneDrive that comes with any Microsoft account.

Office Home and Student 2024, 2019 or 2016?

All the versions below are perpetual licenses for one computer. They differ in Microsoft support, in the Windows versions they accept and in price.

With the 2024 generation, Microsoft renamed Home and Student to Office Home 2024: offers sold under either name cover the same applications, so compare the prices on the cards above. Our page on Office 2024 Home explains the naming and the 2024 editions in detail.

Home and Student or another edition?

The deciding factor fits in one question: do you need an email client on your computer, or will you use Office for paid work? If the answer is no, Home and Student covers everything a household or a student needs. For a student, it is the simplest option: one payment, no account to renew at the end of the school year, and files that teachers can open in any version of Office.

• Home and Business adds Outlook and the right to use the suite for professional purposes.
• Professional Plus adds Outlook and Access, and on our shop it is sometimes priced close to the home editions: compare before you decide on our Office Professional Plus page.
• Microsoft 365 suits families who want Office on several computers, tablets and smartphones: see how to buy Microsoft 365.

Why is a genuine Home and Student license so affordable?

Because these are genuine pre-owned licenses, not counterfeits. Since the UsedSoft ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (case C-128/11), reselling a downloaded software license is lawful in the EU when the original license was acquired for an unlimited period and the first owner no longer uses it. Without a box, logistics or middlemen, the price falls, while the license itself is identical to the one sold in shops and activates on Microsoft’s official servers.

Be wary, on the other hand, of suspiciously cheap keys on some marketplaces: they are often trial or temporary activations that stop working after a few weeks. With us, every order includes an invoice showing VAT and lifetime replacement of a defective key.

Installation and activation

• Requirements: Windows 10 or Windows 11 for the 2019 and 2024 versions, Windows 7 SP1 or later for 2016; 4 GB of RAM and about 4 GB of free disk space. Mac users need a Mac edition, sold separately.
• Before installing: uninstall the trial version of Office preinstalled on many new PCs, as it often prevents your key from activating.
• Activation: follow the instructions in your delivery email. Home and Student keys are usually redeemed on Microsoft’s official setup page and linked to your Microsoft account, which makes reinstalling easy.
• Files: your .docx, .xlsx and .pptx files remain fully readable by teachers and colleagues, whatever their version of Office.

Once activated, the license is yours for good: it does not stop after twelve months and needs no renewal. In return, it stays tied to its version and does not give access to future releases, a trade-off explained in our guide Microsoft Office for students: which version to choose.