Reinstalling Microsoft Office: mac 2011 after installing new SSD in MacBook Pro

adf1976 posed this question in February last year:

"I installed a new SSD in my 2011 Mac and migrated my files using a Time Machine back-up.

Now it seems that my MS Office 2011 won’t activate using the previous product key. MS is no longer supporting Office 2011 and suggests I upgrade to Office 2019 or 365 [$$$].

If I purchase MS office2011 will that work on the SSD. I am running Sierra 10.12.6 - reason I want 2011 is I am familiar with it and its cheaper?"

Responses to this question were basically no help.

I had a similar problem in that I had to revert from Big Sur to Mojave to let me use my 32 bit apps, but this meant my newly acquired Office: mac 2021 would not work and I tried to go back to Office: mac 2021 from Time Machine. I was asked for my key code which I keyed in from the original packaging, but was then asked to activate the product. You enter your Product Key, you click the “Activate” button… and you get a message about the activation server being unavailable and a recommendation to try again later. You try again later and it still doesn’t work. So you try by phone and the phone number has changed. The new phone number directs you to Microsoft's help site which doesn't, since they've stopped supporting this product.

Responses from the community do not help since they basically say "no go, you're done with Microsoft if you want to get the 2011 product running again". However, One-minute Macman has a solution (and I hope he doesn't mind me directing anyone to his webpage) ****

He has a link here to a Microsoft webpage which can't be googled. Thanks to him, my old program is back and running.

[Edited by Moderator]