Microsoft Offers Office 365 Deal for Windows 10 Users with Office 2010

It’s Crazy Eddie time, folks: Users running Windows 10 with Office 2010 or earlier can now purchase a one-year subscription to Office 365 Personal for 50 percent off.

The deal, announced by Windows lead Terry Myerson in a very short post to Blogging Windows, is available via the Get Office universal app that comes with Windows 10.

“I want to highlight a very cool offer from the Office team,” Myerson writes. “If you upgrade to Windows 10 and have Office 2010 or earlier, you can get a 50 percent discount on a one-year subscription to Office 365 Personal through the pre-installed Get Office app.”

So this is very specific. You need to be running Windows 10, of course. And you need to be running Office 2010 or earlier. (Not Office 2013.) This and earlier versions of the suite are only available in standalone–or what Microsoft calls “perpetual”–installs.

As I noted in Which Office 365?, Office 365 is a no-brainer, and Office 365 Personal, in particular, is a no-brainer for individuals. It normally costs $69.99 per year, so presumably you’ll be paying about $35.98 if you qualify for and accept this offer. Here’s what you will get:

Office 2016. You can install a full, desktop-based version of Office 2016–including the applications Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access–to install on one PC. (Or, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote on one Mac, with Office 2016 for Mac.) Unlike with a perpetual version of Office, you can easily move this install from PC to PC at any time.

Office Mobile for tablets and phones. You can install the Office mobile apps on any number of tablets and phones, and get full editing functionality on any one device. This includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Mobile. There are no restrictions on other Office Mobile apps, such as OneNote and Sway. (And others.)

OneDrive cloud storage. Office 365 Personal subscribers get 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage, in addition to the 15 GB that everyone gets for free. (In late 2015, this will change to unlimited storage.)

Skype. As part of your subscription, you get 60 minutes of free Skype calls to mobile phones and landlines every month.

You can learn more about the Office 365 Personal subscription on the Office 365 web site. Why Microsoft isn’t offering a similar deal for Office 365 Home–which provides all of the above, but on up to 5 PCs/Macs and for up to 5 people–for $99.99 a year–is unclear.