In recent years it has become common for Microsoft to release trial or preview versions of its big-name products. This has been the case with Windows 8 as well as Office 2013 giving consumer the chance to try before they buy. If you downloaded the trial version of the suite, you can gain some extra try-out time with this handy hack.

The trial version of Office 365 is only meant to be used for 30 days. After this time you are expected to by a license or stop using the software. In practice, Office does not become unusable, but instead enters a ‘reduced functionality’ mode.

But if you are not sure about committing to the purchase, you can extend you trial period so you can test drive the office suite for a little longer.

It is possible to ‘rearm’ the trial version of the software five times – essentially giving you six 30-day trial periods, or 180 days in total.

While there are various tools that can be downloaded that can do this job for you, there’s no need – everything you require is already available to you. The only thing you need to remember is to run through the rearming process before you trial periods run out; make sure you do it on the thirtieth day of the trial.

Open up an Explorer window and navigate to one of the following folders. If you are using a 32-bit version of Windows, head to:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\

If you are working with the 64-bit release, you should go to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\

Hold down the Shift key, right click the folder called OfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatform and select the ‘Open command window here’ option.

Type:

OSPPREARM.EXE

Press Enter, and you’re done.

You can also navigate direct to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatform or C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatform and type OSPPREARM.EXE into Explorer’s address bar before hitting Enter.

That’s all there is to it. It’s not quite a free copy of Office, but you do get to use it for a little longer.