Office Starter 2010 as a free download: The Microsoft Office light in the test

Microsoft Office Starter 2010 has recently become available for free download. In our test, we show you which functions are included and which hooks there are.

Update: Office Starter 2010 no longer free

• Microsoft has meanwhile taken the free Office Starter 2010 off the Internet again. The download is unfortunately no longer available.
• Alternatively, you can use completely free alternatives like OpenOffice. In the following practical tip, we will show you how OpenOffice performs compared to Microsoft Word.

Office Starter 2010: Word and Excel completely free

• Office Starter 2010 was previously only preinstalled on some new Windows PCs. In the meantime, Microsoft has made the light version of Office available for everyone to download free of charge.
• Microsoft Word and Excel with all important functions are included. Tables of contents, macros and the comment function are missing. However, this is irrelevant for most users.
• With the "Office 2010 To-Go Device Manager" function, you can also load Word and Excel as a mobile version onto a USB stick. So you can use Word and Excel conveniently on any PC.

Office Starter 2010: what's the catch?

• If you start the installation file of Office Starter 2010, the program will be installed directly. You have no way to change the location or cancel the operation.
• So that the free version is worthwhile for Microsoft, advertisements are always shown on the right side. These are links to Microsoft and advertisements. These change every 45 seconds, but are not particularly annoying.
• During the installation, a new drive with the letter "Q" is created. This is necessary because Office Starter 2010 uses a special structure. The drive disappears only when Office Starter 2010 is uninstalled.

On the next page we explain how you can contact Microsoft Support.