Microsoft windows free programs

You can also drag and drop a file from your computer onto the Office. If you just need Microsoft Office for a short period of time, you can sign up for a one-month free trial. You will have to provide a credit card to sign up for the trial, and it will automatically renew after the month. You can continue using Office for the rest of your free month after canceling. After joining the trial, you can download full versions of these Microsoft Office applications for Windows PCs and Macs. This trial will give you full access to a Microsoft formerly Office Home plan.

You can share it with up to five other people. Microsoft also offers free day evaluations of Office ProPlus , which is intended for businesses. You might be able to take advantage of both offers for two months of free Microsoft Office access. Many educational institutions pay for Office plans, allowing students and teachers to download the software for free. To find out if your school participates, head to the Office Education website, and enter your school email address.

Check with your educational institution—or at least look on its website—for more details. On an iPhone or Android phone, you can download the Office mobile apps to open, create, and edit documents for free. Microsoft Home subscriptions are meant to be shared among multiple people. Anyone who pays for Microsoft Home formerly known as Office Home can share it with up to five other Microsoft accounts.

The main owner of the account can add five other Microsoft accounts, and each of those accounts will receive an invitation link. After joining the group, each person can sign in with their own Microsoft account to download the Office apps—just as if they were paying for their own subscriptions. Each account will have a separate 1TB of OneDrive storage.

By the way, Microsoft partners with some employers to offer a discount on Office subscriptions for their employees.

There are completely free office suites that sport good compatibility with Microsoft Office documents, spreadsheets, and presentation files. Here are some of the best:. Use Google Fonts in Word. Customize the Taskbar in Windows What Is svchost. Best Home Theater Systems.

Version 5. Even though the app will be free to most people upgrading from Windows 7 and 8, it apparently is very limited and if you reinstall, you may find yourself having to pay.

VLC is a very capable media player, happy to play DVDs and other video but also able to handle a range of different audio files. Easy to use and with a good range of controls and keyboard shortcuts, VLC can also be augmented by downloading software plugins. You can download VLC for free. The Windows 10 Photos app is OK for retouching photos but it's not about to give Photoshop a run for its money.

If you want to do more than applying filters and cropping an image, then you should give the GNU Image Manipulation Program a try. Despite its slightly juvenile-sounding acronym, GIMP is, in many respects, a fully-featured alternative to Photoshop. While not the simplest program to use, the basics can be picked up quickly, and those willing to put in the time can achieve impressive results thanks to its broad toolset that can handle anything from photo retouching to adding professional-looking effects.

You can find GIMP available to download here. Controversial in that Windows 10 comes with a smart new browser called Edge and predictable in that Chrome is already a hugely popular piece of software. But I don't have a problem recommending it as, for me, Edge didn't live up to its promise. On paper, it is a fast browser that can handle the latest web pages and services without complaint. In practice it too often locked my window until the entire page had loaded.

I could be unlucky but it seems I'm not the only one to have experienced this issue. But perhaps the biggest reason for me to recommend Chrome, or Firefox if you're averse to Google products, is the power of its extensions. If you take a lot of home videos, you probably need to edit and stitch them together right? If not that, you can also check out LightWorks and HitFilm Express , two free professional-grade video editing programs. Speaking of videos, there are many times when you need to convert from one format to another.

Is there a Windows process that is causing spikes in your CPU or other problems. Use Process Explorer and Process Monitor to help diagnose the issue. Work with PDF files a lot? Looking for a good PDF reader? If not, you should check out Easeus Todo Backup , a free program that lets you backup and clone your hard drives.

Another program is Paragon Backup. If you just want to backup your data and not image your entire hard drive, you can use Google Backup and Sync to backup files and folders to your Google Drive storage. Whether you know it or not, you probably have a bunch of duplicate files on your computer! It just happens. You can use Duplicate Cleaner to find and remove those duplicate files. If you want to save more hard drive space, you should look into a program that will analyze hard disk space usage, like TreeSize.

Want to see every possible program or driver that loads when Windows starts? Check out Autoruns , which is a free tool from Microsoft. Been looking for a good free photo editor lately? NET , or Fotor! If you prefer an online photo editor, checkout Pixlr and BeFunky. Looking for detailed information about the hardware on your computer. It can also analyze and monitor your system too.

You can share large files up to 2GB for free with friends and family using a program called WeTransfer.

Other programs include DropSend and pCloud. The popular notes app we all know is Evernote, but there are other great options like SimpleNote , Google Keep , and Notebook. Other good options include FileZilla and CyberDuck. Are you a web developer or coder? Looking for a good HTML editor? Want to learn more about the WiFi networks around you? Ever wanted to create a family tree? Legacy is a free genealogy that you can use to keep track of family and relatives. Another good app is ScionPC.

If you constantly use the same programs over and over, it might be a good idea to download a quick program launcher. One of my favorites is Find and Run Robot. Ever wanted to automate a certain task in Windows? Maybe you want to have your computer turn off every day at 10pm?

Or certain keystrokes you want to record and repeat over and over again? Whatever the case, AutoHotKey is an awesome program for automating many tasks in Windows. Looking to secure your browsing traffic with a VPN?

In 14, I mentioned two professional and free movie editing programs, but they are quite complex. Got kids? Need some parental control software?

The best options are Qustodio and Kidlogger. Free versions are limited obviously. Also, read my post on the different ways to childproof a computer. If you have a lot of music, you might want to consider a music management program like Media Monkey. Another good program is MusicBee. I talked about a VPN for secure browsing in 39, but you can also use a different browser like Tor to hide your identify. Revo Uninstaller will get rid of any program whether it wants to or not. They have a whole free games section.

If you have sensitive data on your computer that you want to permanently and securely delete from your hard drive, I would suggest using a program called dBan. Do a lot of reading? A great app for reading in Windows is the Kindle app. It will also sync down to your phone or tablet too. Love using Instagram? Want to download a photo, video or story from Instagram?