Installed Catalina and lost word documents

Did you happen to enable iCloud? If so, look in your iCloud drive for your documents.

I too wondered where my document files had vanished to. I found them by opening Word, clicked Open in the left hand side bar and selected On My Mac. There appeared all my files out of order. Haven't worked out how to tidy into alphabetical order.

LAM6750 wrote:

Had software problem so Genius Bar upgraded me to Catalina and lost documents. Only got back empty folders

Restore them from the backup you did prior to allowing the Genius Bar to work on your computer.

Turns out all I had to do was attach .docx to all my old documents that didn't have that and pages happily opened them. I can live without the Microsoft formatting. Phew!! I guess I better go and learn how to write formulas in Numbers and / or Google now. Just synced my computer to my apple tv and all is happy in the world again ;-)

My Documents also disappeared, but I eventually restored it to Finder when I went to Preferences Sidebar and selected iCloud Documents to be shown in the sidebar (from which they had disappeared).

You need to shut down your mac. Then open in safe mode (hold down shift while starting and continue to hold down shift till it starts up). Then see if you can access documents. I could. So then, restart in normal mode and you will probably still be able to access documents. Apple help coached me through this.

You need to close down your mac. Then, boot up in safe mode.(hold down the shift key while it boots) See if you can access your document in safe mode. If you can, then restart in normal mode and you will probably be able to access your documents then. Worked for me!

Sorted. Go to Finder Preferences where there is a check list. Click the box for Documents, and it will be restored to Finder.

Time Machine Backup?

Well I can tell you as for me ... I get a message Microsoft Word needs to be updated . However I look on line and see people like me who have old word for mac 32 bit . The new office 365 will not work to open old 32 bit docs either. So in essence unless someone knows different a decade of contracts , propriatery business form doc's I created TOAST !!! VERY SHAMEFUL APPLE gives no warning !!

I would like to offer several important points for you and any of our other viewers.

·      First, Apple has regularly informed all of us for a couple of years that at some point our old 32 bit programs would no longer work with a future OS upgrade. That has finally occurred as we have been told it would.

·      Any other old 32 bit programs you have installed will also be affected. They will no longer work.

·      You will either be required to upgrade Office, if it is recent enough to do so, or you will have to subscribe to oarpurchase a newer version of Office to open and work on your MS files. If a person wishes not to upgrade their Microsoft Office, there are several good alternatives. They are, as noted, the free LibreOffice and OpenOffice apps. Additionally, your Apple OS provides three free programs which you may use as an alternative to Office, Pages, Numbers and Keynote.

·      Any of these apps can and will open your Office documents. You may also create new documents and save them as Word files, etc. when you need to share files with other people who only have Office installed.

·      Using any of these programs does involve a learning curve as they work a bit differently, but all of them are fine programs.

·      If you decide to upgrade Office, you have options. You may elect to subscribe to any of the following:

• • Office 365 Home:         $99.99 per year or $9.99 monthly. This allows you to install Office in up to six devices. This service must be renewed yearly. You may try the service free for one month.
  • Office Personal:           $69.99 per year or $6.99 monthly. This is for installation on one device only. This service must be renewed yearly. You may try the service free for one month.
  • Office Home & Student:        $149.99 one-time purchase cost. This is a purchaseis for installation on one device only and is not renewed. It does not expire.
  • The second and third options include fewer additional apps. Check the Microsoft site for details.

·       I strongly recommend that if you elect to do the upgrade, you first completely remove your Old Office app and its associated bits and pieces which will be spread through several other folders. This can be done effectively with the free program AppCleaner.app. It is easy to use and doing so will avoid creating any conflicts. After this is done, then you may download the replacement Microsoft Office files.

·       Finally, and this is important, when purchasing any of these Office upgrades, you need to register your purchase on the Microsoft web site, including which device or devices the apps are installed on. This can be changed later if a device is replaced. You must do this registration or you can have problems.

In summary, Apple has warned us of the change to 64 bit operations only. It has occurred. Now, it is up to us to decide how to respond.

Please provide more explanation about what "lost all of my Word documents" means. Are you saying all your docs were deleted? Were they moved? ...

Not all my documents are Word, but include, for example, PDF, but are now all shunted under Microsoft without my consent or warning or explanation given. Now I have to spend ages reorganising my filing.

I am still confused!

Did you ever locate your files?

If so, where were they? iCloud? or OnrDrive on Microsoft?

With some answers, I think I could help further.

Also seems there are 2 different people on this thread asking similar questions..very confusing .