Installed Catalina and lost word documents

mrimpulsive1 wrote:

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 !!

There was a lot of warning. I don't understand your issue. Office 2016 and 2019, Office 365, LibreOffice, etc. will open Office documents made with old 32 bit versions of Office. Be more specific about your issue.

Never saw the warning unless it was buried in terms and conditions-

Option to run a 32bit program . Microsoft has the the ability to run old 32 bit programs on 64 bit computers.

Lastly there are noted issues running new version of 365 to run old word docs .

A . I am now forced to rent a program that I owned !

Or B from what I understand I can buy and own for 250 for the right to access docs on a program that’s had force obsolescence put upon me ?

So so I guess I don’t understand why you don’t understand why many of us are perturbed, putting it mildly !

i will bet apple will profit on the 365 subscribers

Actually Bob,

Your last sentence, (You can use an alternative to Office, LibreOffice which open Office documents. LibreOffice is free) is very helpful...Thank you !

All your other conjecture is well " kind of like rubbing salt" .

Non the less... If this libreOffice will open my old 32 bit word Doc's ( which proves my point btw that apple, could have made it possible for the worlds #1 most popular word document program, work for free!

Thus alleviating tons of miffed folks as I am just one of many complainants for this very issue.

Also to be noted: I am a stock holder and full range of owner user of many apple products . I am a huge advocate of all things Apple .

This and Siri being the ( worse of breed) search engine . I do not have any other issues :) :)

mrimpulsive1 wrote:

Actually Bob,

Non the less... If this libreOffice will open my old 32 bit word Doc's ( which proves my point btw that apple, could have made it possible for the worlds #1 most popular word document program, work for free.

Apple has no control over Microsoft products and can not make them available free. If you think Microsoft Office should be provided free then discuss that possibility with Microsoft.

I did't lose my word of excel documents when I upgraded to a Catalina OS, but I now can't open my word documents in Word nor is Excel. When I open files that used to be in Excel, they're now in a "Numbers" program which is similar to, looks like excel spreadsheet, but there's lots of things I can't figure out on it. What happened to Excel? Word? This is costing me time and money.

I have read through all of these comments and I see Apple's response. The make no apology for messing with our files. And they offer no honest solution to this problem of lost or disorganized way of finding our lost documents. My documents have some very important information that I am unhappy that the storage was disturbed. It was like coming into my home and tossing all my files around the house. Or outside my house. I am not happy that Apple disregards the disruption that they created by not properly giving advance notice that they could have...I did call a technician and he insisted I download Catalina without referencing any of the problems I might experience in doing so.... with thoughtless attitudes about the users...I have been an Apple supporter from Steve Jobs initial start up days. And I find Apple is taking a corporate stand not a pro-user position.

In the Finder checklist, I've lost the folder labeled "documents". now, it seems everything was tossed into iCloud where a "documents" folder exists.

I am not yet loving Catalina....is there a means to retrieve all the subfolders out of iCloud easily?

Thank you for jumping in and I'd explored all the Finder tools/preference areas. i may have assumed that Documents were on actually on my mac and not iCloud. Previously, the Documents folder could be seen in the drop down list of Favourites...where it has now disappeared after today's lengthy Catalina install (which in some ways I regret pursuing). is there a means to restore to Favourites and bypass iCloud altogether....since I'm already maxed out on storage there? TY!

mhorenbe wrote:

I have read through all of these comments and I see Apple's response. The make no apology for messing with our files. And they offer no honest solution to this problem of lost or disorganized way of finding our lost documents. My documents have some very important information that I am unhappy that the storage was disturbed. It was like coming into my home and tossing all my files around the house. Or outside my house. I am not happy that Apple disregards the disruption that they created by not properly giving advance notice that they could have...I did call a technician and he insisted I download Catalina without referencing any of the problems I might experience in doing so.... with thoughtless attitudes about the users...I have been an Apple supporter from Steve Jobs initial start up days. And I find Apple is taking a corporate stand not a pro-user position.

Apple is not here. This is a forum where users try to help other users.

Generally they help other users better if those other users remain calm and don't throw pointless accusations around

Office 365 WILL open any older documents created in older versions of Office. You must, however, convert then if you want to be able to use all of the newer Office version's features. I think it is correct to say that the 32 bit problem is an app issue, and it does not affect any documents.

My word docs all have been replaced with Pages icons - some of which open the docs and some of which don't. I'm willing to pay for the Microsoft App if it will open those old documents - but will it now that they are showing up as Pages documents?

Hi - thanks for that detailed post - made things very much clearer - warned or not, I'm in a pickle as tho I'm a relatively long Apple user, I'm daft when it comes to bits and updates etc ... hindsight is 20/20 as they say ... anyway, thank you ... just wondering if you know the answer to this:

My word docs all have been replaced with Pages icons - some of which open the docs and some of which don't. I'm willing to pay for the Microsoft App if it will open those old documents - but will it now that they are showing up as Pages documents?

I have also lost all my recent word documents prior to mid 2019 . . .very disconcerting.

Sure - I knew about the 32 bit and 64 bit issue, but I didn't realize that upgrading to OSCatalina would eliminate my ability to use 32 bit apps. That was not communicated.