Microsoft Office 365 not working since update to Catalina

Kurt, thanks. Yes, the un-install and re-install of Office 365 did the trick. What is funny though is that, before I realized it was a 64 vs 32 issue, I was on the phone with Microsoft yesterday, thinking it an Office issue, but they have not yet trained up their people to cut right to the obvious issue once the caller mentions "Catalina". The logic of where the problem was hit me after step 9 with the nice person working her way through their help manual. Old fogies, like myself, might be forgiven for missing the essential at first glance, panicked about not accessing our documents, but the MS help desk should be a tad more clued in.

Microsoft are not supporting Word for Mac anymore.

Completely false. MS isn't supporting Office 2011 or older anymore. They aren't just ancient, they're 32 bit and will never be updated. Office 2016, 2019 and 365 are 64 bit.

Click the apple logo top left of your screen, select system report, scroll down to legacy software, click that and you will see all programs running 32 bit.

No one will ever find what you mean with those instructions. While holding the Option key down, click the Apple logo at the top left and choose System Information. In the left column under the Software section, click Applications. Which is all irrelevant in Catalina since there isn't a 64 bit Yes/No column anymore.

isabella60,

Do you have any third party add-ons for Office installed? Other users here have noted they prevent Office 365 from working in Catalina because they're (apparently) 32 bit. The OS starts to launch the Office 365 app you chose, but then hangs on the 32 bit extras.

If that's not the case, go to the Applications folder and put all of the Office 365 apps in the trash. Go to this Microsoft downloads page and click the link next to Office suite (without Teams). This is the latest release and that link includes all of the apps.

I can't be sure, but it sounds like your Office apps are a 32 bit version. Or that if they are a recent 64 bit version, they are not registered (activated) with Microsoft. That can cause what you describe. In other words, you can open files, but can not make any changes to them. I recommend you visit Microsoft's site where you can find directions to "activate" your Office apps. This is necessary whenever a person transfers files, etc. to a different computer. If you are already registered with Microsoft, the computer you are using must also be registered to activate the apps.

Last, if you do have the older 32 bit apps and don't know what to do, I offer the following for your consideration. I would like to offer several important points for you and any of our other viewers concerning the ‘problems’ with Microsoft Office after an OS upgrade to Catalina, if that is what has occurred.

·      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. This appears to be the case with you. The message announcements were received when an older 32 bit program was opened.

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

·      As noted, if a person wishes not to upgrade their Microsoft Office, there are several good alternatives. They are 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.

·      You should be aware that using these other apps to open Word documents will result in formatting changes.

·      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 have Microsoft Office for Mac 2016 or later, it can be upgraded at no cost. If it is an earlier version, it cannot.

·      If you decide to upgrade an older version of 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 purchasefor installation on one device only and is not renewed or have a monthly fee. It does not expire.
  • The second and third options include fewer additional apps such as having no Outlook app. Check the Microsoft site for details.

·       I strongly recommend that if you elect to do the Office 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 potential conflicts. After this is done, then you may download the replacement Microsoft Office files safely.

·       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. I hope this information is helpful to you.

Hello all - I upgraded to Catalina today and experienced the same issues you all described with O365 not working.

Here is a site to upload the O365, 64 bit apps - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/update-history-office-for-mac

After loading them, I found them in Launchpad. Open the 64 bit versions from Launchpad. You be asked to purchase or log into them from your O365 account in . After you log in and confirm they open, close them and add the 64 bit apps to your doc. Then remove the old 32 bit apps from the dock.

Hope it works for you too.

Seems to be working now. I reinstalled MicroSoft Office 365, and have no issues

I suspect that different versions of the Apple computers act somewhat differently. I installed the latest version of Office prior to upgrading to Catalena and had no problems. However . . . . before installing the new Office software, I first completely uninstalled my older version of Office. That means ALL of the bits and pieces of the program which reside in other various folders. To do that I use a free uninstaller program. (Some people have suggested not to do that, but I had no problem.) That way I got a good clean installation with nothing from the earlier version to cause problems. Also some earlier versions of Office also have an uninstaller. Using that should give you a clean uninstall before installing the newer software. Lastly, the new software (as mentioned above) needs to be registered on the Microsoft web site for use in a specific computer. If your computer is changes, then you need to unregister the old one and register the new one. I hope this if helpful.

Hello, have you tried to quit from the activity monitor?

Also have you contacted Microsoft? since it's a Microsoft app it would be good to also see if it is something in their end.

As last resort you can uninstall and instal back

Click the apple logo top left of your screen, select system report, scroll down to legacy software, click that and you will see all programs running 32 bit.

I have a problem with MS Word, too, but the latest version of Word is 64 bit and is intended to work with Catalina. However, the message board at Microsoft is filled with complaints about the way the latest versions of Word and Catalina don't play well together.

My Office for Mac stopped working when I upgraded to Catalina. I was able to download Drive free from the Office website and the latest apps for Word and Excel. Word is working ok but excel will allow me to open and change documents but only up to 5mb which is no good at all. Now I have download the free Appache Open Office which works a treat. I might stick with this.

Sorry you are having these problems. It would be helpful to us if you could provide some additional information such as; did anything change prior to having these problems? (that might have caused them.) What is your Mac model and OS version? You might be better off to go to the Microsoft help site where there may already be people who have solved this problem.

…it wants to save to something called OneDrive stored under an ancient email address that I long ago removed from MS.

It may be old information held over from a previous version or preferences you were using.

Open Word, and then its preferences. Click on File Locations in the bottom row.

Do you see any default locations pointing OneDrive? If so, modify or remove it.