2011 Microsoft word

You have omitted vital sentence parts.

• ”it wants me to upgrade.”
  • What does “it” mean?
  • Upgrade ... what?
• “how do I get my older version back?” — Version... of what?

Anyway, Word 2011 cannot work with MacOS Catalina, as that antiquated version of Word is a 32-bit app.

https://roaringapps.com/app/microsoft-word-2011

wssl0717 wrote:

So we have no choice but to purchase the new microsoft word.

Among the choices...

• Buy Microsoft Office 2019
• Subscribe to Microsoft Office 365.
• LibreOffice.
• OpenOffice.
• Apple iWork Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, and which can read and write most Office documents.
• Roll in the pre-upgrade backups, and revert to the older macOS release.
• Use something other than Microsoft-format documents.

Office 2016 was also upgraded to a 64-bit app some years ago and is still supported, but that's no longer being sold.

wssl0717 wrote:

So we have no choice but to purchase the new microsoft word.

If you want to use Word then yes that is your choice. Of course you can also take the more drastic approach and downgrade Catalina to your previous OS.

you can also just get https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/libreoffice/ it's free and open and save as ms office formats

Sure, you have many other choices.

One of them is to use Apple's Pages. Pages imports and can export MS Word files.

I purchased Microsoft Office Home and Student 2019 at a real reasonable price. Though, if you go that route I would completely delete Office 2011 first. The Office 2019 opens all docs created by 2011 without exception. I would recommend AppCleaner (free) to remove the 2011Office program.