MS Office for an old Macbook air question.

fretmeister · September 2023

I tried googling this but I got loads of conflicting answers.

My youngest has a 2013 Macbook Air that used to be mine. It needed the OS updating to allow some of her school apps to work but now MS Office for Mac doesn't. It is running Big Sur, which I believe is the last available update for the 2013 Air.

Some search results suggested opening any Office element and then updating, but as none of the elements will run at all that is impossible. The app store only suggests moving to Office 365 and doesn't give any other option - not even to buy the standalone Home & Student version. Have to go via MS website for that.

I am assuming I will have to buy a new version of Office, but before I do that, is there a way to update Office without spending money?

If not, presumably the Office Home & Student 2021 version will still run on a 2013 machine?

ta

guitartango · September 2023

I am guessing she has a 0365 account from her School, why not just use the Web apps in Office 365 ?

Word, Excel , PowerPoint all work quite well

fretmeister · September 2023

She's got stuff saved on the laptop that she can't get to.

For reasons that elude me (I'm a Windows person) it won't show her documents at all without a working version on the machine. And being a teenager who ignores things - she never saved anything anywhere else.

Didn't even do the simple option of emailing herself a copy of anything important.

guitartango · September 2023

fretmeister said:

She's got stuff saved on the laptop that she can't get to.

For reasons that elude me (I'm a Windows person) it won't show her documents at all without a working version on the machine. And being a teenager who ignores things - she never saved anything anywhere else.

Didn't even do the simple option of emailing herself a copy of anything important.

Easy, depending on the size email the files from her laptop to her School Account , then they should be saved to the cloud

From my guess the Version of Office no longer works with the updates, its a bit like running Office 2010 on a Windows 10 Machine (some may work) but activation may be an issue.

I would not waste the money on a local copy of office , just for a few word documents

strumjoughlamps · September 2023

Have you looked in 'home' folder for docs? Iirc you have to press a key and click to reveal it.

Also does Pages and Numbers work on BigSur? Might be worth installing that to see if you can at least open files. Or try LibreOffice..

Danny1969 · September 2023

Just go to terminal and paste this in

curl -s 'https://api.macapps.link/en/openoffice' | sh

Then hit enter

That will auto install Open office ... that can open and edit all her MS docs and it's actually a good enough office for most people ... it's all I have used for business in the last 10 years

Stratavarious · September 2023

Just use the web version of O365. Upload the files to view/edit on the cloud account she will almost certainly have.

The school should advise or have guidance to avoid going down any wrong rabbit holes.

Installing the free Pages app from Apple should open any Word file on the Mac.

Funkfingers · September 2023

There is a way to convert Pages documents so that Windohs can read (but not edit) them. It is several years since I last did this. I shall need to think about it.

Microsoft has Office Suite users over a barrel. "Subscribe to 365 or you're stuffed. Bwa-ha-ha-haa!"

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MS Office for an old Macbook air question.

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