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PDFs won't open after updating to OS Big Sur

I had problems with my MacBook Air and rebooted the lot following Apple Support's advice (over the phone). Since then, I have been unable to open my PDFs; Word, XLS and other Office documents. I did buy the Office suite for Macs on the old version but do I need to purchase new ones?

What if I just want to read my pdfs and word documents etc?


MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Jan 14, 2021 7:31 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 14, 2021 7:51 AM

Your older Office-version is probably 32-bits and doesn’t work on Big Sur.

You have 3 options:

  • buy a new version (e.g. Microsoft 365)
  • use Apple’s own Pages, Numbers and Keynotes. These apps are already on your Mac but possibly don’t match with all your needs
  • download the free Office Libre for Mac. It works fine together with Office-files. You can open them, work on them and save them. To let this happen automatically: after dowloading and installing, right-click on e.g. one Word doc. Left-click on Get info. In the new window, Look at Open with and select LibreOffice. On the same window, click on the button Change all


about Pdf- files: Open them with Apple’s own PreView: also already on your Mac

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1 reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 14, 2021 7:51 AM in response to DebtheHen

Your older Office-version is probably 32-bits and doesn’t work on Big Sur.

You have 3 options:

  • buy a new version (e.g. Microsoft 365)
  • use Apple’s own Pages, Numbers and Keynotes. These apps are already on your Mac but possibly don’t match with all your needs
  • download the free Office Libre for Mac. It works fine together with Office-files. You can open them, work on them and save them. To let this happen automatically: after dowloading and installing, right-click on e.g. one Word doc. Left-click on Get info. In the new window, Look at Open with and select LibreOffice. On the same window, click on the button Change all


about Pdf- files: Open them with Apple’s own PreView: also already on your Mac

PDFs won't open after updating to OS Big Sur

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