Pirated or heavily modified versions of Office often crash, fail to save documents correctly, or conflict with Windows updates.

Some archive creators fool users by compressing a massive file filled entirely with zeros. While a 5GB file of pure zeros can compress down to a few megabytes, it contains no actual software data. Once extracted, it will not install Microsoft Office. Major Risks of Downloading 10MB Office Files

: Students and teachers can often get Microsoft 365 for free through their institution.

Even the Office Deployment Tool (ODT), a tiny 260 KB command-line utility, simply downloads the full installation files from Microsoft's servers—it doesn't magically compress a 4 GB suite into a few hundred kilobytes.