You helped me transfer my old laptop to my new laptop back in January.  I'm really bad about doing the updates that pop up all the time.  I usually just push "ignore" a gazillion times, but I went ahead and gave in to the recent update (I've come to know now as the Evil Catalina!!!......and boy did I make a mistake!  My computer is pretty much useless.  Word and Excel are both not working now.  Is this something you can fix?  Or am I going to have to subscribe and pay for everything again?  
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I have encountered many issues with the Catalina rollout. Mostly due to the installer. The actual operating system has been fine but getting it installed has been problematic for many people. In regard to your Microsoft issue. Yes, this was going to happen. Catalina 10.15 is all 64 bit which means that any old programs that run in 32 bit would stop working. Apple has been moving toward an all 64 bit process for many years. If you went to Mojave 10.14 last year you may have seen a warning when opening Word, Excel, etc.. saying "this version is not optimized for this Mac".

So this means the old 32 bit versions of Office will no longer work in Catalina. So here are your options:

1. Abandon Office and use Pages, Keynote, Numbers
2. Abandon Office and use Google Docs online
3. Buy the new version of Office for one computer at $150. (A one time purchase with no future updates)
4. Subscribe to Office at $69 per year for one computer.
5. Subscribe to Office at $99 per year for 5 computers.