Where to Find the Best Free Microsoft Office Training and 365 Tutorials in 2024?

Q: Where can I find the best free Microsoft 365 tutorials?

The following links to Microsoft's 365 learning resources all come highly recommended and we have put them all in one place for you to help you more easily navigate your way through the free learning opportunities that are available. And, if you have recently attended a formal training course and would like some follow up learning resources to consolidate your knowledge then you may find these very useful too. Free OneDrive Courses Free Teams Courses Free OneNote Courses Free MS Forms Courses Free ToDo Courses Planner Sway MS Search Yammer Whiteboard

FourSquare Training Article

Where to find free Microsoft-Authored Office and M365 Courses

Excel | PowerPoint | Word | Outlook | Access | OneDrive | Teams | OneNote | Forms | ToDo | Planner | Sway | Search | Yammer | Whiteboard | Dataverse

However you learn best and whichever learning format suits you the most, Microsoft's helpful suite of free tutorials for traditional Office packages and Microsoft 365 Apps may just have something for you, from step-by-step modules with written instructions, to on-demand video learning (unfortunately free live Online tutorials appear to be no longer available).

Free Microsoft Courses that are Microsoft-Authored

From 2023 and moving into 2024, one of the very best places to discover free Microsoft Office training with excellent on-demand video tutorials and Online learning resources is actually from Microsoft themselves and all available through their website (see the links at the bottom of this page) and from their TakeLessons.com live tutorial site too.

(Note that the TakeLessons website does now charge a nominal fee for its live courses and these are no longer cost free like they used to be). At the time of writing only Excel and PowerPoint are on the live virtual course syllabus and you will have to wait before other Office subjects such as Word and Outlook and so forth beome available. However, when it comes to free on-demand video learning there is plenty to go at for just about every application on Microsoft's website).

A New Source of Free Tutorials For Microsoft Office Software

The answer to the question of where to find free Microsoft Office training has in the past very often been to look for your subject or niche on YouTube or elsewhere on the Internet for free video tutorials covering aspects of popular applications such as Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook and Access etc. Whilst there are still exhaustive learning resources available on YouTube et al completely for free, you should definitely check out Microsoft's own in-house and self-authored tutorials as well for on-demand learning.

These free MS Office and Microsoft 365 tutorials might be described as 'up-and-coming' but, as you might expect, they already promise to offer some of the most effective ways to learn Microsoft's own software available. They have perhaps not been as enthusiastically publicised as you might expect (or at least not here in the United Kingdom). We would, nonetheless, anticipate that take-up for them grows significantly amongst private learners, schools, colleges and elsewhere over the coming years and we hope that the selected list of free Microsoft courses provided here contributes just a little bit to promoting awareness of them and towards offering an entry point to some really useful learning opportunities which cost nothing.

Microsoft is now fast becoming one of the best free learning resources available for its own traditional Office software (now all under the Microsoft 365 umbrella as of early 2023). Its free learning resources and bite-sized tutorials are fantastic if you are a private individual looking to advance your skills a little bit and if you don't have the time or spending power to attend full day-long commercial courses. You can even get access to a few scheduled live courses (usually around 30 minutes long) which you can attend Online for a small fee.

For UK students some of these resources might be a little USA-centric and scheduled courses are admittedly not always at the best time of day for us on this side of the Pond, but nonetheless being able to access live half-hour tutorial sessions with an instructor at a low cost is something that you would be very lucky to find anywhere else.

Can I even get free Microsoft Tutorials with a Live Instructor?

Unfortunately the free, live bite-size learning for Excel, PowerPoint and Teams which was previously available has now been either removed or is now charged at a nominal fee on the Microsoft powered Take Lessons site.

Free live Tutorials for Microsoft Teams have also been removed and the old link for live instructor-led training now redirects to Microsoft's video learning page for Teams and has been removed from our list of resources.

Our Predictions for the Future of Free Microsoft Learning by Microsoft

Since these free Microsoft courses are relatively new, we have to ask ourselves how they might develop and evolve in the future. And, our expectation is that both the written step-by-step guides and on-demand video course content will continue to grow steadily into an expansive catalogue of learning materials.

When it comes to the Online tutorials with a live instructor however we think that the ultimate future of these is much less certain. Because these are live courses for some of Microsoft's most popular applications, our suspicion is that these could only ever meet a tiny fraction of the potential demand for them. Were these courses to be widely publicised then the simple truth is that even Microsoft would not be able to employ sufficient numbers of training instructors and schedule enough courses to meet anywhere near the demand that is out there. As such, we expect that these live courses might actually never become much more than a vanity project, that they may never grow much beyond what was previously available and that there is a fair chance that at some point in the future such live courses might be abandoned altogether or become something more like live lectures for large audiences rather than being interactive smaller-group events.

Our advice was originally to take advantage of Microsoft's free live instructor-led courses for traditional Microsoft Office packages and for Microsoft 365 Apps whilst they were there, because they may not be around forever.

And, our forecast came to fruition quite a bit sooner than expected and over the past months (between December 2022 and April 2023) Microsoft have removed free live tutorials for Excel, PowerPoint and Microsoft Teams.

Our Curated List of Free Microsoft-Authored Microsoft Office and 365 Tutorials

The following links to Microsoft's Office learning resources all come highly recommended and we have put them all in one place for you to help you more easily navigate your way through the free learning opportunities that are available for subjects including Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook and Access. And, if you have recently attended a formal training course and would like some follow up learning resources to consolidate your knowledge then you may find these very useful too. The list we have provided is by no means exhaustive, but a curated selection of learning resources for some of the most popular and commonly used Microsoft productivity applications combined with essential learning for some 365 apps such as Forms, ToDo, Sway, Planner, OneDrive and MS Teams that might be new to you.

To conclude, if you are looking to hone your skills upon common Microsoft productivity applications for school, work, job seeking or for a personal project then you could find the following resources very useful indeed. Alternatively, if you are looking for corporate or commercial Microsoft Office application training or Microsoft 365 courses then why not give us a call or send us an email and we will be more than happy to discuss your requirements.

Where can I find the best free Microsoft Office tutorials?

Free Microsoft Excel Training Resources from Microsoft

Free Microsoft PowerPoint Training Resources from Microsoft

Free Microsoft Word Training Resources from Microsoft

Free Microsoft Outlook Training Resources from Microsoft

Free Microsoft Access Training Resources from Microsoft

As well as offering learning resources for traditional Office packages, Microsoft also provides free help and learning for newer Microsoft 365 applications as well and here are a few of them which we think you might find useful: