A limited technical preview of Office Web Apps was announced yesterday. Interested users could apply to become part of the technical preview but there was no instant way to get access to Office Web Apps at that time.

Instead of having to wait days, week or even months before they get accepted users can do the following to get instant access to Microsoft’s Office Web Apps preview.

It starts by logging into Windows Live Skydrive. Users who do not use English as their main language might need to change the language to English first before they can continue with the process.

Upload at least one Office document. The following screen should appear after uploading that document:

A sentence with a link to join the preview program should be visible above the uploaded document. A click on that link will open a license agreement page. Accepting the license will automatically enable the Office Web Apps Technical Preview for that account.

A new menu entry will be displayed in the header afterwards called new. A click on that opens a submenu with options to create a new Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, Microsoft Word document, Microsoft Excel workbook or Microsoft OneNote notebook.

Only Excel workbooks and PowerPoint presentations are available at this moment in time. It is also possible to edit Excel and PowerPoint files that have been uploaded. Files that can be edited will have an Edit option in the top menu indicating that. via Liveside