How to get MS office on MacBook Air ?

Office 365 and 2019 both require Mojave, 10.14.x as the minimum OS.

Office 2016 would run in Sierra, but is no longer sold. Or, you'd have to look for a used copy.

Office 2011 would also technically run, but MS shut down the activation servers for it. Even if you purchased and installed a copy of 2011, you'd have no way of activating it.

Her Mac supports all versions of macOS up to the current Big Sur. If she upgrades the OS to at least Mojave, then she'd be able to install Office 365 or 2019.

Sorry, but no, it won't. Sierra was released at the same time as Office 2016.

The Office apps used to spread across quite a few versions of macOS, but starting about two years ago, MS changed their support of the Mac to this (underscore is mine):

Office for Mac is supported on the three most recent versions of macOS. As new major versions of macOS are made generally available, Microsoft will stop support for the oldest version and support the newest and previous two versions of macOS. Product functionality and feature availability may vary on older systems. For the best experience, use the latest version of any operating system specified above.

So, Office 2019 may have run on Sierra at one time, but if you to try and install it on a Sierra system now, it won't run since the current and two previous OS releases are Big Sur, Catalina and Mojave.

An older system it was already installed and running on I think will keep going since it's already been activated, and that activation info is on the Mac. But you won't be able to install it new an any OS older than Mojave. You can't even get versions of Office 365 back that far anymore on MS's downloads page.

Office 2019 also will not run in the upcoming Monterey. Office 2021 (or 2022, whichever they call it), will be the new perpetual license version.

Sounds correct. That means any MS Office of 2011 or later should work. No reason you could not get Office 2019 for home and student for Mac and install. It should work fine. You can do the download program process like from Amazon and should install and work correctly. You can also download from other sites as well.

Depending which version of the Mac os she has will dictate which version of MS Office is required. It is not too old for MS Office to work. What version of Mac OS does she have?

No doubt it's confusing. You can find incorrect system requirements not only on various web sites selling or discussing Office for Mac, but even Microsoft's own site has a few old and outdated pages that are still up.

They explain it a bit better in this statement:

Office 2019 for Mac is supported on the three most recent versions of macOS. When a new version of macOS is released, the Office 2019 for Mac Operating System requirement becomes the three most recent versions at that time. That is, the new version of macOS plus the previous two versions.

So, it was entirely possible that at one time, Sierra, High Sierra and Mojave were viable for Office 2019. But as soon as Catalina was released, then the three supported OS versions were High Sierra, Mojave and Catalina. Attempting to install 2019 on a Sierra system would suddenly stop working.

Their main page is here. The above statement came from this page.

Taylor1260 Said:

"How to get MS office on MacBook Air ?: Hello, we brought our daughter a MacBook Air just under 4 years ago. It’s a MacBook Air 13 inch (early 2015) 1.6 Intel Core i5, 8gb."

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Contact Microsoft:

To clarify all of this, contact Microsoft. They'll have the answer(s) you need, therefore giving you an upfront answer.

They are the developer of the Software. 

Start Here:  Microsoft Contact Us Virtual Agent - Microsoft Support. Perform a chat session with Microsoft using a computer, as it would be more user-friendly doing so.

Taylor1260 wrote:

If someone can confirm which is correct that would be appreciated and whether office 2019 will run on her system of not.

Just visit the Microsoft Office site to do your own confirmation regaring version compatibility.

Kurt, I believe MS Office 2019 will run on Mac 10.12 (Sierra) or later.

Good to know. I guess the sites that are selling Office 2019 has some misleading system requirements info. as that just state Sierra or later to use.