Microsoft Word not working after Catalina update

If it's Office 2011 or older, it's 32 bit software and is dead in Catalina. All apps must be 64 bit. Microsoft dropped all support for Office 2011 over a year ago. It will never be updated.

Your choices are:

1. Erase the Mac's drive and restore the backup you made before installing Catalina.
2. Purchase a newer version of Office. Either the one-time cost perpetual license Office 2019, or the subscription version Office 365.
3. Use an alternative, such as LibreOffice or OpenOffice. Note that neither of these has a replacement for Outlook.

If you have 2016 or 2019 then both will work. The 2016 version can be updated to 64bit which is what Catalina requires for all applications. If you used a version prior to Office for Mac 2016 then your upgrade choices are Office 365, Office for Mac 2016 or 2019.

If you have Word 2011 you need to upgrade to Office 365 or Office 2019:

https://products.office.com/en-us/compare-all-microsoft-office-products-b

Or to purchase Word alone:

https://www.microsoft.com/en

Keep in mind that there are known issues with Office 2011 on Mojave. Also, Microsoft no longer supports Office 2011 at all.

That is unlikely to be true. Per past behavior, Apple supports the current OS and at least two back with updates and fixes. The OS has to be older than that before it falls into the discontinued category.

Apple will not somehow force all users to use anything other than Catalina. There are a lot of Macs out there that are perfectly functional, but are too old to install Catalina. Some can't go higher than El Capitan. It's not like they'll suddenly stop functioning a year from now.

Tell me, after you've bought a car do you expect it to run perfectly on the tank of gas the dealer topped off? Do you expect to never change the oil or buy new tires? Of course not. So why do you expect that you'll be able to use the same version of MS Office the rest of your life?

You're welcome. 🙂