Catalina Compatibility with MS Office

You cannot install any OS older than Big Sur on any M1 Mac. This is also true of the most current Intel based Macs. Apple's products have always been this way. With only a few, very rare exceptions, you can't install an OS that's older than what your Mac shipped with.

Apple didn't wreck anything. The Mac and its OS are their products, they can do whatever they want with them. It's up to third party vendors to keep their products up-to-date so they work in the latest OS. Apple can't do that for them, and vendors get plenty of advance documentation of what they need to do.

Your choices for an M1 Mac (presuming you specifically need Office and not a workalike product) are Office 365 or Office 2019.

There's almost nothing different between the two, with these exceptions:

1. Office 365 requires a subscription. The cheapest is $70 a year for a one computer license.
2. Office 365 gets new features as they're ready to release.
3. Office 2019 is a one-time cost perpetual license. Same as your now defunct, Office 2011.
4. Office 2019 does not get new features. Only bug fixes or minor improvements to existing features.
5. Office 2019 is nearly dead - if you upgrade to the next major OS Apple releases this fall. Microsoft's latest Mac rule is perpetual releases of Office are only supported for three Mac OS releases. Since 2019 was released with Mojave, that means Big Sur is the third OS version, and it will not work in whatever Apple releases this fall. Meaning, MS will be releasing a new perpetual license version to coincide with Apple's next OS. All of that means if you buy Office 2019 now, you'll have to pay full price again for Office 2022 (or whatever MS calls it) in order to have a functioning perpetual version of Office beyond Big Sur.

If you had a 32 bit version of Office, like Office 2011 or earlier or a not-updated Office 2016, then it will not work on Catalina as explained in the support document you came from.

If your Microsoft Office version is so old, you can update to either Office 365 from the App Store, our buy the new Microsoft Office 2019.

If you have Microsoft Office 2016 it can be updated to 64 bit to work on catalina. See here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/office-for-mac/office-2016-for-mac-64-bit-upgrade

Outside of that you can use free alternatives like LibreOffice or Apples own Numbers, Pages, and Keynote,. free from he App Store. They can both handle Office documents.

MissLegacyOS wrote:

Hi! Thanks -- You are right, it is the 2011 version of Office... but 365 will require either a new purchase, or I fear, a "subscription", i.e. again an unnecessary $$. I do have a 365 license through work, but it is for online, so it's not very desirable, and won't work if I'm not in WiFi. I have to admit, I liked the old "buy and install" type of software... and useful things like envelopes or labels tools used to work better on the older versions. I wonder if I should go back to Mojave? Apple should really advise of the wreckage they do to software, printer drivers and other software (like film scanner drivers...) when they dramatically change OS. I now have 4 great Canon printers that don't work with my new M1 MacBook...

Is it easy to get back to Mojave from 10.15.7, Catalina?

No, it’s not easy to revert to Mojave if you don’t know what you are doing as it requires a complete erasure of your boot drive. And as for your rant about macOS changes Microsoft has complete control over that. Office 2011 is now TEN YEARS old and no longer receives updates from Microsoft. If you want to blame someone blame Microsoft. Office 2016 and newer work fine on new Macs. Microsoft decided not to offer free updates to you. They want you to purchases the newer version of office. It’s not Apple’s responsibility to maintain compatibility with ten year old software. Finally, it is quite possible that Canon has updated drivers that will restore use of your printers. Have you investigated?

If you need Office right now - and I presume you do for the M1 Mac - you can get Office 365 for one year at the $70. Then, don't renew it when the year is up, and instead purchase Office 2022.

The software is actually the same. Note the download page is for both 365 and 2019. It's just in how you activate it. Adobe's CS6 Standard and Extended is also like that. The software itself is literally identical. What serial number you put in determines how it's activated.

You'll be able to directly import your Outlook 2011 data into the new version of Outlook, so that's a plus. It's far more work to bring the data from Entourage 2008 or older forward.

It was up in the air for a while if there was even going to be another perpetual version of Office. Just a couple of months ago, Mac announced there would be at least one more. So what's coming in the fall may be the last such version. It really only makes sense when the support for the perpetual software is three years. Business version of Office 2019 - $250. Single use Office 365 for those same three years - $210.

Office 365 gets much cheaper than any perpetual version when you're talking about having it on more than one computer. For $100 per year, you can install it on up to any 6 devices you own. Mac, iOS or Windows (any combination). So for that $300 over three years, six perpetual licenses of Office 2022 Business at $250 a copy would be $1,500. Even for only two Macs, it's $500. So 365 is already cheaper for those same two computers.

MS has made no secret that perpetual licensing for Office is going to go away soon. And when you look at pricing between the two, and especially the fact the perpetual version dies in three years (if you always upgrade macOS), 365 doesn't cost any more, and is usually cheaper. Only a single user who never upgrades the OS past the point their perpetual version will run on saves any money.

MacOS Catalina requires apps to be 64 bit. No 32 bit apps work on Catalina.

You can run any 64 bit version of Microsoft Office. Office 2019 and Office 365 are 64 bit.

As I said, Office 2019 will work. It ia not a subscription service.