Buy Office 2010 and get a free Office 2013 upgrade

If you are planning to purchase the next Office once it comes out, and holding back on the previous version of the software because of that, you may be interested to know that Microsoft started a promotion on Friday that gives free Office 2013 upgrades to customers who buy an eligible version of Office 2010 between October 19, 2012 and April 30, 2013.

For that, you need to buy and install a qualifying Office product during that period, and sign up for an email reminder to receive a notification when the new version of Office is available. To get the new version, you need to follow the instructions in the email. The offer itself is redeemed on this page then.

Here are the most important terms and requirements that you need to know about:

• The offer is available in all countries and regions where Microsoft Office is available
• The offer is valid for genuine versions of Office, including Office Home and Student 2010, Office Home and Business 2010, Office Professional 2010, Office University, Office for Mac Home & Student 2011, Office for Mac Home & Business 2011, Office for Mac University 2011 and individual Office 2010 applications.
• Qualifying products are only valid when they are full packaged products, product key card products (e.g. downloads), or direct original equipment manufacturer products that came preinstalled on the PC
• It is not valid for Office Starter 2010, Office 2007 or earlier, trial versions of Office, or Office purchased through Volume Licensing, Home Use or Student Select programs.
• You are required to keep the receipt as Microsoft may request proof of purchase
• To redeem the offer you need to enter the Office product key on the website and sign in with your Microsoft account to download the new Office product.
• If you select to upgrade to Office 2013, you get to choose a language version relevant to your region country. If you select Office 365 instead, you can pick any of the languages supported.
• The new Office requires the Windows 7 or Windows 8 operating system.

The offer is an excellent choice for people who made the decision not to buy Office 2010 to wait for the new version of the Office suite instead. The big question however is if everyone else benefits from buying Office 2010 to get the free Office 2013 upgrade, or if it does not make a difference to buy Office 2013 directly when it comes out.

The retail versions of Office 2013 will be a tad more expensive than their 2010 counterparts, and considering that current Office 2010 versions are offered at a discount at retailers such as Amazon, you may end up making a bargain after all.

On the other hand, if you do not need Office 2010 right now, there is no need to hurry as you can wait until the official release of Office 2013 to compare prices more effectively and check to see if the release dropped the pricing of Office 2010 even further.