why am I being charged a yearly fee for Microsoft 365 Catalina update rather than buy it in an Apple store?

If you install any of the Microsoft applications in the Mac App Store, they are Office 365 clients, and inherently you will be subject to a annual Microsoft subscription fee to activate and use them. An alternative would be a single, perpetual license to Office 2019 for Mac for as long as Microsoft supports it.

What subscription? If your version of Office is 2011, there is no subscription version for that. It's a one-time cost perpetual license version that no longer works in Catalina.

If you have Office 365, which actually is a subscription version of Office, you do not need to purchase a new subscription. What you may need to do is update it. Download and install the latest version from here.

Office 365 has never been anything but subscription software. Upgrading to Catalina had nothing to do with the fee.

riverlady wrote:

I did not know that nor was there a warning. Word and Excel have worked perfectly for me until Catalina. I am a simple user that expects things to work. Not a nerd nor a techie. I am not an office just an occasional user. No more.

Then consider using Pages and Numbers. They are free and are generally sufficient for the casual user.

You don't have to pay a yearly fee. Just buy the license for Office 2019.

ltiscornia wrote:

Did not answer my question. WHY was this not presented to people who upgraded, before they upgrade. I would have never upgraded if I knew it would cost me to upgrade. I see a class action is in order here.

You always have option to revert back Revert your Mac to a previous macOS version - Apple Support

1 can not use microsoft word or excel unless I pay a yearly fee to upgrade. Why was this not made clear before upgrading, as I would not have upgraded.

Word and Excel are Office apps. You can't separate the two.

Microsoft hasn't sold these apps as individual titles for a very long time.

Did not answer my question. WHY was this not presented to people who upgraded, before they upgrade. I would have never upgraded if I knew it would cost me to upgrade. I see a class action is in order here.

Apple started the switch to 64 bit over 10 years ago with the release of Snow Leopard. Starting two years ago, Apple made it clear 32 bit apps were going the way of the Dodo. With the release of Mojave last year, they made it very obvious. Every 32 bit app you launched provided the warning that the software was not optimized for your system.

Not paying attention isn't Apple's fault.

Oh really??! Yes. You are correct. I can go back to Mojave. I do not have the skills, time or access to the proper accessories needed to do this after reading how to do it. Believe me, if I could I would go back! You are assuming we are tech nerds and we are not! We are used to using Apple products that work intuitively and well and this Catalina is a Catastrophe!

I do not need Office. Just Word and Excel. Simple. Easy. Was not informed before upgrading to Catalina. I will NOT pay a fee for a product I do not need to use that often. I will figure it out some other way. I dislike Catalina for way more reasons than this. The Apple Photos product is now just incredibly slow, the keyword function is abominable and the keywords do not show up on iCloud downloaded photos and are not searchable when trying to upload into another media such as Facebook. Have to scroll through pages and pages of photos. Saturday everything was perfect, Sunday onward it has been truly awful. 

I did not know that nor was there a warning. Word and Excel have worked perfectly for me until Catalina. I am a simple user that expects things to work. Not a nerd nor a techie. I am not an office just an occasional user. No more.

it happened simultaneous with the upgrade. I agree it is a Microsoft issue but doubt I would have received the notice if I hadn’t upgraded.

The Apple photos mess is a much worse problem that few seem to be providing answers as that IS an Apple and definitely a Catalina issue!

I did not know that nor was there a warning.

In High Sierra, this warning appeared the first time you launched any 32 bit app. In Mojave it appeared once every 30 days for 32 bit apps.

The word "App" would have been the name of whatever 32 bit app you had just launched. In your case, that would have been at minimum, any of the Office 2011 apps. Clicking on Learn More would have brought you to this page.

Yes, this is still all vague to a non-techie person. But the fact that a warning was there should have at least prompted any user who didn't understand it to ask someone who did.