Keyboard shortcuts are one of the main utilities when using a PC. In most cases, they serve to save us time when performing everyday actions, but in many others they unlock options hidden in plain sight, such as the four-key combination that makes us have free office.
The four keys to have Office
There are many ways to try squeeze the potential of an operating system like Windows. We can use third-party programs, registry changes, command prompt codes, etc.
However, rarely are you going to unlock something as extremely useful as free access to Office simply by pressing four keys. The command you shouldn’t forget from now on (only less important than the Ctrl + Alt + Del life saver) is the following: Ctrl + Shift + Windows + Alt.
What does this? Aside from making us look like finger contortionists, will open Microsoft 365 on a computer with Windows operating system. This makes it easy for us to have the shortcuts to create a new Word document, Power Point presentation, Excel spreadsheet/book, Forms form or quiz, etc. at hand. We must remember that Office, as we know it, is becoming Microsoft 365 to “create, share and collaborate in one place with your favorite applications”.
We will be able to access these shortcuts either from the sidebar that opens or from the main menu, where we will have links to the online version of the Office applications at the click of a button. Four keys and a click. Not bad, right?
Also available online
If you are looking for an online, free and “original” option, it is good to remember that you can use Office Online. This suite is offered by Microsoft itself to compete with the online options offered by Google, and it works directly from the browser itself. Here we find online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other apps like OneNote, Sway or Flow. The files that we edit are stored in OneDrive or we can download them to our computer.
you just need one Valid Microsoft account (Outlook, Live, Hotmail) to start the suite in its free format. Despite coinciding in design with the office software we know, it is somewhat more limited in terms of functions compared to the premium version, but we won’t miss any of the main features either, which can get us out of trouble and avoid making us buy and have to activate a Microsoft Office license.
Another of the alternatives that you have at your disposal is to download some of the open source and free suites equivalent to Microsoft Office. Our recommendations are LibreOffice, OpenOffice, wpsoffice and, if you have a Google account, discover how easy it is to use your Google Docssomething 100% online and very equivalent to the use of Office online, with automatic saving in this case in your Google Drive account.