School account is not active

Question

Is there a free account for educators? Currently, my school's account is not active.

Answer 1

Dear @Penny,

Good day, and thank you for reaching out to the Q&A Forum. I understand that you are trying to activate or access your school’s Microsoft 365 Education account. From my research, Microsoft offer Office 365 Education at no cost for eligible schools, students, and educators. Eligible institutions can get Office 365 Education for free, which includes web versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Microsoft Teams, and other education tools. However, eligibility must be verified. Schools need to complete academic eligibility verification before they can access education subscriptions such as Office 365 A1 for faculty and Office 365 A1 for students. To better understand your situation, could you please confirm a few details?

1. Are you using a school-provided email address? For example, an email address ending with your school’s domain.
2. What happens when you try to sign in? Please share the exact error message, if any.
3. Was the school account previously active and then became inactive, or are you trying to set it up for the first time?
4. Are you an educator, student, or school administrator?
5. Has your school already completed Microsoft Education eligibility verification?
6. Are you trying to access Office 365 A1, Microsoft Teams, Outlook, or another Microsoft 365 Education service?

If your school account was active before but is now inactive, I recommend contacting your school’s IT administrator, as they may need to check whether the account, license, or school tenant is still active. If you don't know who your IT administrator is, please refer to this article: How do I find my Microsoft 365 admin? - Microsoft Support 

Thank you for your patience and understanding. Once you share the details above, I can help provide more targeted guidance. I'm looking forward to your reply.

---

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

Answer 2

Educators can get free access to Microsoft 365 Education (including OneNote Class Notebook and online versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) if their institution is eligible.

For educators:

1. Go to oneNote.com/classnotebook.
2. Select Sign up for a free Office 365 account.
3. On the Office in Education page, enter the school email address and select Get Started.
   • The system first checks whether the school already has a Microsoft 365 account and, if so, directs to sign in.
   • If the school does not have an account but is eligible, it walks through a sign-up process to create a free Microsoft 365 Education account.
4. On the next page, choose I’m a teacher to get a teacher account.
5. Complete the email verification and account setup steps.

If the school’s domain is not recognized or the account is not active, contact the school’s IT/admin to confirm whether the institution participates in Microsoft 365 Education or to have them enable/activate the school’s tenant.

Students can similarly sign up for Microsoft 365 Education using their school email address if the institution is part of the program.

---

References:

• Using OneNote Class Notebooks with a free Microsoft 365 account: A guide for teachers and educators
• How can students get a free Microsoft 365 subscription? - Microsoft Q&A