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.
· 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 and must be upgraded or replaced with 64 bit apps.
· 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. Good luck
