My Mac just updated to Big Sur 11.1. Now my Office 2011 is not compatible. What can I do?

I hope the following is helpful to you in addressing ‘problems’ with Microsoft Office after an OS upgrade.

·      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.

·      Any other old 32 bit programs you have installed will also be affected. They also will no longer work and will have to be upgraded or replaced.

·      If a person elects not to upgrade their Microsoft Office, there are several excellent 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 older Office documents, allowing you to work with them. With them 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 likely 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 and they are free.

·      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 purchase for 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.

·       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 coming change to 64 bit operations only. It has occurred. Now, it is up to us to decide how to proceed. I hope this information is helpful to you.

You will need to upgrade to a newer version of Microsoft Office ... OR switch to another Office-compatible type product from a different vendor.

Ref: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/upgrade-macos-to-continue-receiving-microsoft-365-and-office-for-mac-updates-16b8414f-08ec-4b24-8c91-10a918f649f8?ui=en-us&rs=en-us&ad=us

Starting with last year’s macOS Catalina 32 bit applications are no longer supported. Office 2011 is a 32 bit application and will no longer work. Office 2016 and later are 64 bit and will work with Catalina and Big Sur. The problem is Microsoft does not offer a free upgrade path. You must subscribe to Microsoft 365 (which contains all the Office Apps plus OneDrive cloud storage and Skype) OR you will have to purchase a standalone license for Office 2019. You can also follow Tesserax's advice to find an alternative suite of apps that replace Office but support Office’s formats. There is Apple’s own free iWork suite that includes Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. There are open source projects like LibreOffice that perform all the functions of Office and are offered free of charge.

If none of those are satisfactory the only thing left is the nuclear option of downgrading Big Sur back to what your previous macOS version was. That option is a last resort, very difficult for an inexperienced user and meaning you must completely erase your hard drive and start over from scratch.