Updated Mac to Catalina and now cannot access Word

Hi Sarah,

I would like to give you some suggestions as below:

1. Refer to this article: Sign in to manage your Office product, sign to Services & subscriptions with the affected email address. Check if there have the correct license in the email account.

2. Download and run the license removal tool, then you can try to activate Word again.

If the issue persists, could you tell me more information about this issue?

1. When will you see the "Retry" prompt during activating Office? After you input your email address and password or after you click the Activate button on the lower left of Word?

2. Could you provide a screenshot of the error message?

I've also just upgraded macOS to Catalina but haven't encountered this issue. Have a try and tell me the results, I can do more tests on my end.

Regards,

YS

Please, go to the Word menu and choose About Word. This displays a dialog showing the version and license type. What does it say there? If you have an office 365 subscription it should say your license type is Office 365 subscription. The version should be 16.29.1 or 16.30 (16.30 is rolling out right now - maybe you have it or will get it shortly).

What version do you have? What does it say for the license type?

Hi Sarah,

Could you tell us more information about this issue? Since you post this question in Office 365 Home category (as Jim Gordon said, your Office version should be 16.29.1 or later), I did my tests on this Word version but couldn't encounter this issue. If you are using Office clients with 16.29.1 version or later, could you tell us the asked information in the above replies? With more information, we can help you further.

If you are using 32-bit Office apps like above community members, have you noticed the alert (From this Apple article: 32-bit app compatibility with macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 and later. I found the article from the Learn more section on How to upgrade to macOS Catalina) during upgrading your macOS?

Regards,

YS

Hi All,

We would like to post a summary about this case so that all the community members can check the issue status more convenient.

Issue Descriptions:

Fail to activate Office for Mac after updating to OS Catalina

Affected environment:

Office 2016 for Mac

Mac OS Catalina

Suggestions:

1.       Office 2016 for Mac should be activated by signing with a Microsoft account with a valid license but not using the product key directly. The license is associated with this account by finishing redeem steps. To check whether you have the correct license, please check one-time purchased Office product from the Services & subscriptions page with your Microsoft account. If you can see product information on this page, that means your account owns this license well.

2.       Deactivating Office before reinstalling the apps. To do that, Download and run the license removal toolto clear all license left on this Mac.

3.       completely uninstall then reinstall from the version release history page. As all the latest version packages are 64-bit only, they can work well with Catalina because Catalina can only support 64-bit apps.

Further Information:

If affected users still meet problem after trying steps above, please kindly provide use the error message screenshot when you fail to use/activate Office and your product name, for example, Office Home and Student 2016.

Regards,

Rena

See the answer from Rena below, but really, I had to get on a chat and have them walk me through it.  Then it worked.