Do you get excel

Do you want to use Microsoft Excel for free? Of course you do!

This post is going to show you all the ways you can use Microsoft Excel for free in a totally legitimate and legal way from Microsoft.

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program that is part of the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software.

Excel allows users to import, manipulate and visualize data. It’s a powerful tool for data analysis and can be used to create charts, graphs, and pivot tables. Many businesses worldwide use Excel for these purposes.

Excel is also a powerful tool for personal productivity and can help you to stay organized and on track with personal budget templates, track bills and payments, manage expenses, and more.

Excel is available for purchase as part of the Microsoft Office suite, but it can be used totally for free if you know how.

Follow this post to find out how you can start using Excel for free today!

Get Excel for Free Online

Most people don’t know this, but you can use the online version of Excel for free.

Microsoft offers a free online version that can be accessed by anyone with a Microsoft account. The online version of Excel includes a lot of the most frequently used features as the desktop version so depending on your use case the free online version might be all you need.

Excel Online vs Excel Desktop: What’s the Difference?

Here is a comparison of the availability of some of the main features between the online and desktop versions of Excel.

This is not an exhaustive list and even within these feature categories, there will be differences in the implementation between the desktop and web. But it should help you decide if the online version is good enough for your Excel uses.

How to Get Excel Online for Free

Microsoft Excel online is free and can be accessed by anyone through a free Microsoft account.

In fact, you might already have access to Excel online through a free Microsoft email service such as Outlook, Hotmail, or Live. You can use those credentials to sign into office.com.

You will be prompted for your email and password and once entered you will be taken to the main Office hub page.

You have access to some of the most popular Microsoft apps including Excel from within the Office hub. All for FREE!

• Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
• Outlook, Skype, and Teams.
• Calendar and To-Do

These are all included with your free account.

💡 Tip: Click on the Waffle icon in the upper left then click on All apps to see all the apps to which you now have free access! There are many more great apps included such as Power Automate for task automation.

If you don’t already have one of these Microsoft accounts, then you can sign up and get one for free!

Go to outlook.live.com and click on the Create free account button. After you provide the usual details and confirm your account, you will be taken to the Outlook email app.

You should see the Excel app icon on the left pane, but if not you can access it from either the Waffle icon at the top, or the App icon at the bottom.

Click on the Excel icon and this will launch the Excel online app. You’ll then be able to create a New blank workbook or open any Excel files you’ve previously saved in OneDrive.

💡 Tip: You can open a new workbook by going to https://excel.new. Save this URL in your browser’s bookmark bar and you can create a new blank Excel workbook with one click!

This will open a new workbook that automatically gets saved to your OneDrive account. It should look very familiar if you use the Excel desktop app as they are becoming harder and harder to tell the difference between them.

📝 Note: You might see a more compact version of the Excel ribbon commands the first time you use Excel online.

💡 Tip: This Single Line Ribbon can easily be switched back to the more familiar Classic Ribbon. Click on the Chevron icon to the right of the ribbon then choose the Classic Ribbon option.

Congratulations! You now have access to the free online version of Microsoft Excel 🥳

Get Excel for Free with a Microsoft 365 Trial Account

What if you want to use the desktop Excel app?

If you only need to use the desktop version of Excel for a couple of days, then this method will be perfect for you.

You can get access to the desktop version of Excel with a free 1-month Microsoft 365 trial account.

These are the available Microsoft 365 plans which have a free 1-month trial and include the Excel desktop app.

• Microsoft 365 Family
• Microsoft 365 Apps for business
• Microsoft 365 Business Standard
• Microsoft 365 Business Premium

⚠️ Warning: You will need to add a payment method to your account to sign up. But you can cancel your plan before the end of the trial period to avoid any charges.

Get Excel for Free on Android or iOS

Excel is also available for free as a mobile and tablet app for Android and iOS.

You can find the Excel Android app on the Google Play store while the Excel iOS app is on the Apple App Store.

• Excel for Android
• Excel for iOS

The Excel app for mobile devices has limited functionality but it can be a great option for quickly viewing an Excel file when you’re not at your desktop computer. But don’t expect to be using it for anything other than viewing files and basic data entry.

The extra real estate on a tablet device does add to the usability of these apps and helps to make the experience less frustrating.

Get Excel for Free with a Microsoft 365 Education Plan

If you are a student or staff at an eligible education institution, then you already have access to Microsoft Excel for free.

Some educational institutions will partner with Microsoft to buy bulk licenses that allow all their students, staff, and faculty to use the full Microsoft Office suite for free.

This isn’t really free since the school is paying for the license and you are paying for the school. But it’s already included in your tuition fees so you might as well use it!

Go to the Microsoft 365 Eduction site and enter your .edu email address and click the Get Started button to sign up.

You will need access to your .edu email address as you will be required to verify it with a code sent to your email.

💡 Tip: Some universities and colleges offer their alumni lifetime email accounts with their .edu domain. So you might still be able to use this Microsoft 365 Education plan even if you’re currently not a student.

This will get you the full desktop version of Excel plus all the other Office apps for free!

Get Excel for Free with the Microsoft Developer Program

The Microsoft 365 Developer Program gives you access to an instant sandbox preconfigured Microsoft 365 tenant which will allow you to build solutions using sample data.

You’ll be able to join the program with an existing free Microsoft account or you can create a free account for the sole purpose of joining the developer program.

This program is totally free and it gives you full access to all the Microsoft Office desktop apps including the desktop version of Excel. You only need a phone number to verify your account.

Click on the Join now button to sign up and you will be prompted to sign in with a Microsoft account.

You will need to provide a few details and verify your account via a phone number. But once you’re done, you will have access to a full Microsoft 365 E5 environment. The E5 subscription will last for 90 days, but you can renew it for free on expiry.

Click on the Go to subscription link or go to office.com and sign in with the admin credentials you set up during the Developer Program account creation.

This will take you to the Office Hub page of your new Microsoft 365 E5 environment and you should see an Install Office button on the top right.

Click on the Install Office button and choose the Office 365 apps options to install the Excel desktop app.

Conclusions

Excel is used by close to 1 Billion people for work and personal productivity, but most users don’t know they can access Excel online with a free Microsoft account.

There are fewer features available in Excel online compared to the Excel desktop app, but most users won’t even notice the difference. Microsoft has been working hard to close the feature gap between Excel online and the desktop.

Excel power users will be missing some of their favorite features in Excel online such as VBA, Power Query, and Power Pivot. But there are still options for getting the desktop version of Excel for free if you require these tools.

You may have access to an M365 subscription already through your educational institution or you can sign up for a free 90-day renewable developer license for the M365 E5 plan.

Do you know about these ways to get Microsoft Excel for free? Have you used any of them? Let me know in the comments below!

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Excel is an electronic spreadsheet program that is used for storing, organizing, and manipulating data.

What Excel Is Used For

Electronic spreadsheet programs were originally based on paper spreadsheets used for accounting. As such, the basic layout of computerized spreadsheets is the same as the paper ones. Related data is stored in tables — which are a collection of small rectangular boxes or cells organized into rows and columns.

All versions of Excel and other spreadsheet programs can store several spreadsheet pages in a single computer file. The saved computer file is often referred to as a workbook and each page in the workbook is a separate worksheet.

Spreadsheet Cells and Cell References

When you look at the Excel screen — or any other spreadsheet screen — you see a rectangular table or grid of rows and columns.

In newer versions of Excel, each worksheet contains roughly a million rows and more than 16,000 columns, which necessitates an addressing scheme in order to keep track of where data is located.

The horizontal rows are identified by numbers (1, 2, 3) and the vertical columns by letters of the alphabet (A, B, C). For columns beyond 26, columns are identified by two or more letters such as AA, AB, AC or AAA, AAB, etc.

The intersection point between a column and a row is the small rectangular box known as a cell. The cell is the basic unit for storing data in the worksheet, and because each worksheet contains millions of these cells, each one is identified by its cell reference.

A cell reference is a combination of the column letter and the row number such as A3, B6, and AA345. In these cell references, the column letter is always listed first.

Data Types, Formulas, and Functions

The types of data that a cell can hold include:

• Numbers
• Text
• Dates and times
• Boolean values
• Formulas

Formulas are used for calculations — usually incorporating data contained in other cells. These cells, however, may be located on different worksheets or in different workbooks.

Creating a formula starts by entering the equal sign in the cell where you want the answer displayed. Formulas can also include cell references to the location of data and one or more spreadsheet functions.

Functions in Excel and other electronic spreadsheets are built-in formulas that are designed to simplify carrying out a wide range of calculations – from common operations such as entering the date or time to more complex ones such as finding specific information located in large tables of data.

Excel and Financial Data

Spreadsheets are often used to store financial data. Formulas and functions that are used on this type of data include:

• Performing basic mathematical operations such as summing columns or rows of numbers
• Finding values such as profit or loss
• Calculating repayment plans for loans or mortgages
• Finding the average, maximum, minimum and other statistical values in a specified range of data
• Carrying out What-If analysis on data, where variables are modified one at a time to see how the change affects other data, such as expenses and profits

Excel’s Other Uses

Other common operations that Excel can be used for include:

• Graphing or charting data to assist users in identifying data trends
• Formatting data to make important data easy to find and understand
• Printing data and charts for use in reports
• Sorting and filtering data to find specific information
• Linking worksheet data and charts for use in other programs such as Microsoft PowerPoint and Word
• Importing data from database programs for analysis

Spreadsheets were the original «killer apps» for personal computers because of their ability to compile and make sense of information. Early spreadsheet programs such as VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3 were largely responsible for the growth in popularity of computers like the Apple II and the IBM PC as a business tool.

Excel Alternatives

Other current spreadsheet programs that are available for use include:

• Google Sheets: A free, web-based spreadsheet program
• Excel Online: A free, scaled-down, web-based version of Excel
• Open Office Calc: A free, downloadable spreadsheet program.

Thanks for letting us know!

Office 365

The easiest way to get started with Excel, is to use Office 365.

Office 365 does not require downloading and installation of the program. It simply runs in your browser.

In our tutorial we will use Office 365, which can be accessed from www.office.com.

Install

Once you have successfully logged into Office through www.office.com,
click on the Excel icon on the left side to enter the application:

After entering the Excel application, click on the New blank workbook button to get started with a new workbook.

Enter a name for your workbook, and hit the enter button:

The Excel view has columns and rows, similar to a squared math exercise book.

Do not worry if the functionality looks overwhelming at first. You will get comfortable as you learn more in the chapters to come.

For now focus on the rows, columns, and the cells.

Ok. Let’s make a function!

• First, double click the cell A1, the one that is marked with the green rectangle in the picture.
• Second, type =1+1.
• Third, hit the enter button:

Congratulations! You have typed your first function,
1+1=2.