Office 2013 will be available just after the first quarter next year and Microsoft is launching an offer where customers can get a free upgrade for their Office 2010 purchase. This is offer is only open to newly bought Office 2010, from October 19th 2012 upto April 13th 2013. Providing users, “… keep your Office dated sales receipt as proof of purchase until you redeem the offer, as a copy of this may be requested by Microsoft to confirm eligibility”, and have a valid product key, then users can upgrade to a similar version of Office 2013 when it is launched next year.

Users would need to purchase, install and activate one of the Office 2010 products, sign up with email for the launch notification and then download the free upgrade. The exact start date of when the download will be available is not known yet, but users will have until May 31st 2013 to redeem the free offer and download. Office Home and Student 2010 becomes 2013, Office Home and Business 2010 to the 2013 version and Office Professional 2010 to 2013. These three variants also get the option to instead choose a one year subscription to Office 365 of the different types. For Office University 2010, then customers will get a four year subscription to Office 365 University and people owning Office for Mac Home & Student 2011 will only get a years subscription to Office 365 Home Premium.

People who buy Microsoft’s ARM based tablet, Surface running Windows 8, will get a free preview version of Office 2013 included with the device and later when full Office 2013 is launched, they also get a free upgrade.