MSOffice and Catalina

Mac
#1

A friend has a late 2013 21.5" iMac which WAS running Sierra (10.12.6) with MSOffice 2011 (yes…I know it’s all old software…but she’s one of those “it works so I’m not updating anything” people :frowning:
Recently she discovered Safari wouldn’t open some websites, so she unhappily decided to update the OS to Catalina (10.15.7) which is the end of the line for her machine.
Doing so immediately borked Office 2011 and a few other apps.

She then bought (from a legitimate company) and installed MSOffice 2021. It activated fine but when she went to use it, the dreaded “This software requires MacOS 11” notification appeared :frowning:
Even Office 365 requires MacOS 11!

She refuses to use Pages and insists on Office which is important to her because she’s an author.
Is there any version (still obtainable) of MSOffice which will work with Catalina?

Anyone? All help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

#2

I don’t really get why she won’t use pages, even if she is an author. You can export office documents from Pages. Anyway, I think the only option is to update the operating system using Open Core Legacy Patcher.
Alternately I guess you could buy an external drive & install Sierra just to run office 2011.

#3

Hey Richard, thanks for replying.
She’s an older lady and set in her ways. I’ve tried to convince her that Pages will be perfectly adequate (and compatible) for her use but…“it’s not Microsoft Office” :roll_eyes:

She knows she’s going to have to get a new computer eventually but wants to keep her current one going for as long as possible.

#4

Well, you’re always going to be very limited with a 10 year old computer…

3 Likes
#5

Alternatively you can try downloading one of the earlier versions from here.

Try version 16.55

1 Like
#6

Agree with Dambo101.
Last Mac Office 365 Revision to run on Catalina

I had a similar problem a couple of years back with my wife’s 2015 MBP which had an older OS on it and was unable to update office past 16.42.

#7

Couple options if you can’t get a working version.

  • OCLP - mentioned above, open core legacy patcher allows installation of newer MacOS versions on older, unsupported hardware.
  • A virtual machine. For either Windows or different versions of MacOS. Parallels / VMware Fusion.

Or look to pickup a cheap, slightly newer iMac second hand.

#8

Thank you to everyone who replied and offered suggestions :+1:
She’s going to try downloading an older version of office.
Hopefully that does the trick

#9

You can pick up a s/h iMac M1 for ~$1k. I’d be strongly recommending that.

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