MS Office update preventing use of purchased s/w

You may be interested in the following.

Microsoft Learn – Word "reduced functionality mode"?

Microsoft Support – Update Microsoft 365 or Office on your macOS or iOS device

If I understand the second article correctly, it should be possible for you to download an update to Office 2021 that will fix the problem – for now.

If you were having the problem with Office 2019, you would be hosed. If you were having the problem with Office 2021 and could not update your Mac past Monterey, you would also be hosed. But according to your tag line, you have a M3-series MacBook Pro released in 2023. That implies that you're running something later than Monterey (those MBPs shipped with Ventura and can't run anything earlier). Which implies that you should be able to grab the Office 2021 update to fix the problem (if – and this might be a big if - Microsoft's support article is accurate).

Use LibreOffice. It's free, compatible with MS docs and, unlike the Apple apps, similar enough to Word and Excel to be picked up pretty quickly. It even runs my Excel macros once I added a Java runtime. I can't speak for Powerpoint and whatever the database was called because I never use them. You could try it while you're waiting for someone to tell you how to get round the Microsoft forced upgrade.

janewent wrote:

Can anyone help me to restore use of MS Office 2021 following MS's diabolical decision not to allow verification of existing paid-for s/w. Please don't answer by suggesting that I use Apple's equivalent suite!

I've uninstalled then reinstalled twice with no change.

The s/w opens but in the usual cut-down version available to non-subscribers.

Thanks.

Here is a write-up: Microsoft Office 2021: No Save, no Edit, … - Apple Community