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SU offers free Microsoft Office programs to students

Syracuse University students now have the opportunity to use Microsoft’s most up-to-date software for free.

All current SU students can now download Microsoft Office 365, an application that includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint, for free as part of an agreement with Microsoft through Microsoft’s Student Advantage program.

Anyone who is currently taking classes at SU is able to download the Office 365 ProPlus application on to up to five computers and five mobile devices, including iPhones, iPads and Androids. Faculty and staff who are not also students are not eligible for the program.

SU was offered the Student Advantage program because of its relationship with Microsoft, said Chris Finkle, the communications manager in the Information and Technology Services department.

“We are an enterprise customer of Microsoft, meaning we buy licenses for their software for all university administrative computers which serve employees, faculty and staff,” he said.



Students can download the Microsoft application through their SUmail student email account. The programs will remain available to students as long as they remain enrolled at SU. Once a student graduates or leaves the school, his or her subscription to the program will expire and he or she will only be able to access Microsoft programs in a “reduced functionality mode,” according to the ITS website. This means that former students will no longer be able to create or edit documents under the student subscription of Microsoft Office.

Microsoft has offered the university a number of free services over the years, with SUmail, the campus email server, being the largest of those services, Finkle said.

“The Office 365 program is really the next generation of SUmail and (SUmail) really integrates well with Office 365,” he said.

Finkle said that he thinks Microsoft is offering its programs for free in order to build its customer base.

The Student Advantage program had been in the works for several months before the program finally launched. Finkle said that technical and licensing issues had to be solved before the promotion was offered. Both took a few months to be worked out, he said.

ITS employees said the reaction to the new program has been positive.

“I think its fairly easy to download the programs, some people have definitely had problems with it and I have seen some major issues although with a very small amount of people.” said Serge Stambolyan, a junior film major who works in the ITS Center. “Most of the time it has been a computer problem and not a Microsoft or Syracuse University problem.”

Stambolyan said that he was surprised to see so many people come in and ask about the Office programs.

Finkle said that social media helped get the word out, saying ITS “had a lot of retweets when we made the announcements over social media.” He added that the newest version of Office seems like an improvement over previous years.

“I think having the Office programs will benefit me,” said Kyle Driscoll, a freshman undeclared major in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management. “There are a lot of things a person can do with that software. Excel and Word are the best programs of their kind. I definitely think it will be beneficial over the next few years.”





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