macbook pro (mid2012) is 32-bit

Your Mac is 64 bit.

Versions of macOS prior to Catalina could run both 32-bit and 64-bit.

With Catalina, the old 32-bit app interfaces were retired.

Your Microsoft Office was Office 2011, or older.

Versions of Office prior to 2016 are 32-bit.

Long unsupported and known to be buggy versions of Office, too.

Microsoft Office 2016, Office 2019 (full purchase), Office 365 subscription, and the (free) LibreOffice app are all 64-bit.

Purchasing Office 2019, subscribing to Office 365, or switching to LibreOffice, or maybe to the free Apple iWork Pages, Numbers, and Keynote apps—apps which can read and write many office documents—will get you going again on Catalina.

Sometimes old documents, even though editable, cannot be opened with newer apps simply by double-clicking the document icon. I've found many times that I must open the newer App and then use the app's "Open" command to get the files to open in the the newer app. Example from Pages:

LibreOffice should allow that.

I’m not sure what you mean by “retrieve”. Open?

Any errors or diagnostics or messages?

What sort of Office document(s) are involved? Word? Excel? PowerPoint?

Are these local Office documents, or documents stored in (and retrieved from) Office 365?

Which version of Microsoft Office were you using?

LibreOffice is intended to open all recent Office documents, but there’s probably some weird or old Office doc that might cause issues. That’s best discussed with the LibreOffice folks. They’ll probably ask for a copy of the doc.

Office itself sometimes can’t open (really) old Office documents.

Hi,

MacBook Pro mid 2012 is 64bit system. You can't use 32bit apps on Catalina that's why you lost your Windows office apps.

You can purchase Windows 365 without previous office apps.