MY MAC IS VERSION 10.8 AND WON'T UPDATE SO CANT ET WORD OR POWERPOINT

The year your Mac was released determines how far forward you can upgrade the OS.

To use the latest versions of MS Office apps, you'll need to be running Big Sur, Monterey or Ventura.

➡️ macOS 11 Big Sur is compatible with the Macs listed here 

Copy the Office files to an external drive and bring them to a new Mac.

Use Apple's Pages and Keynote apps to open the docs.

Or consider using LibreOffice (free) to work with those files.

Is your iMac 10.8 or 10.15?

You need to determine when your iMac was released. If it was a long time ago then you may not be able to update to something that is productive.