Catalina & Word

Your existing Microsoft documents are unaffected by the Catalina 64-bit application requirement. Whether you choose one of the following, you can continue to open, edit, and save your Office documents. Apple's applications do not work on Microsoft documents in their native document format and translate then into the respective Apple document format, and export (translate) back to Microsoft document format. This allows for variation in the resulting document content.

1. Subscription - Microsoft 365
   1. Personal
   2. Family
   3. Applications are located in the Mac App Store, and are strictly subscription applications
2. Single-purchase - Office 2019 for Mac
   1. Home & Student
   2. Home & Business
3. free, 64-bit LibreOffice Suite
   1. Download
   2. Documentation
4. Apple applications (free, 64-bit, not clones of Microsoft applications with missing features, Catalina or later)
   1. Pages
      1. Documentation
   2. Numbers
      1. Documentation
   3. Keynote
      1. Documentation

If I were to fork out for Office 2019 or Microsoft 365 or whatever solution there is, would I be able to open my existing word & excel documents?

Yes, your documents will be the same as always.

Office 365 is a yearly subscription. Office 2019 is the current one-time cost perpetual license version.

This is a complete mess & I’m not the only victim of this change.

You're not a victim of anything. Software doesn't last forever. 32 bit software is dead on the Mac, and now also in Windows. MS is no longer distributing a 32 bit version of Win 10.

You are welcome.