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MS Office for Mac 2021

I have Office for Mac which I purchased and activated 18 months ago. I recently opened a Word doc sent to me which I believe was created in Office 365. Now I’m unable to use my Office for Mac. It states I must activate Office 365 and take out a subscription. Can anyone help with this?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 13.3

Posted on May 18, 2023 5:36 AM

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Posted on May 18, 2023 6:14 AM

I think you will need to contact Microsoft about that: Contact a third-party vendor - Apple Support, but from what I have read on this site attempting to talk sense into them will only result in frustration and wasted time.


I suggest you do this instead. Open that document using any number of free programs such as Apple's Pages or third party products such as LibreOffice:


https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pages/id409201541?mt=12

https://www.libreoffice.org/


Those are just two examples. There are others. They are capable of reading, editing, and saving Microsoft Word formatted documents and Excel spreadsheets.


I gave up on Microsoft years ago, when they made continued use of their products too inconvenient. Fortunately no one needs Microsoft any more.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 18, 2023 6:14 AM in response to JoeBar44

I think you will need to contact Microsoft about that: Contact a third-party vendor - Apple Support, but from what I have read on this site attempting to talk sense into them will only result in frustration and wasted time.


I suggest you do this instead. Open that document using any number of free programs such as Apple's Pages or third party products such as LibreOffice:


https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pages/id409201541?mt=12

https://www.libreoffice.org/


Those are just two examples. There are others. They are capable of reading, editing, and saving Microsoft Word formatted documents and Excel spreadsheets.


I gave up on Microsoft years ago, when they made continued use of their products too inconvenient. Fortunately no one needs Microsoft any more.

May 19, 2023 9:24 AM in response to JoeBar44

Ah, the license got lost/trashed.


Still doesn't make a bit of sense why a document from a person using 365 would cause such an issue. Because it certainly shouldn't.


And the free online version? Well, yes, there's that. It's also a very watered down version of Office. Meaning, it may not be able to display the document properly if the creator used features that don't exist in the online version.

MS Office for Mac 2021

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