Feels like being shut out of using Word Office 2021

It's rkaufmann87 please. I prefer Word to Pages too however I don't rant about it which is against the Terms of Use on these forums, please read them if you haven't. In the event you don't know where the Terms of Use are, there is a link at the bottom of this page.

Also, you have alternatives to buying MS Office, there are free alternatives including LibreOffice which is completely compatible with MS Office and essentially is a an MS Office clone.

FLNana715A wrote:

Kaufman - because I need to use it for my volunteer work when my boss is having me work on making more brochures or guides. This is the only time I use it. For my own personal writings, I prefer Word formatting.

Pages seems entirely irrelevant to the actual problem. I agree with KiltedTim that there is some sort of issue with you Microsoft installation and Microsoft is probably the place to go for help.

If it were me, I'd completely uninstall everything Microsoft and start over. I found this:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/uninstall-office-for-mac-eefa1199-5b58-43af-8a3d-b73dc1a8cae3

Try this. Right click on a word file, get info and in that screen set the file to "open with" and be sure the 2021 version is there. Then set for all to open with that version on same screen.

What “old Word app” is opening?

If you have an M1 Mac, it’s not even possible for you to have had an older version installed on that machine.

Pages is not Apple’s “version” of Word. It is a stand-alone app. There is no “war” between Apple and Microsoft. It sounds like you haven’t actually installed Office correctly or you have not set the default application for opening word documents, OR the document you’re attempting to open is a pages document, not a Word document.

There is no "war" going on between Apple & Microsoft and there is no need rant about your feeling about the Pages app. Your problem is with a Microsoft product, please contact the developers for support OR you can also navigate to the Office for Mac forums hosted by Microsoft for assistance.

If you dislike Pages, then simply uninstall it.

What operating system are you running? Did you check the system requirements for that version of the software?

If an old version of Microsoft Word keeps launching, that version has to be installed somewhere. That has nothing to do with Pages.