Convert from Office 365 to Microsoft Office purchase

Leslie Brown 20 Reputation points
2025-10-21T18:56:16.8833333+00:00

I bought Microsoft Office for MAC 2021 and then canceled my Microsoft 365 subscription. I opened my workbook and updated it. It will not let me save - the save and save as functions are greyed out

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | MacOS
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John Oliver 11,675 Reputation points Independent Advisor
2025-10-21T19:38:27.5466667+00:00

Hello Leslie Brown, Thanks for posting this in our community.

Even though you've installed Office 2021, your apps may still be trying to use the expired Microsoft 365 license, which can cause features like Save and Save As to be disabled. To check this, open Word or Excel, go to Help and check for updates to make sure your Office is up to date. Then go to About Word (or About Excel) and look at the license type. It should say something like "Microsoft Office LTSC Standard 2021 for Mac." If it still shows Microsoft 365, that means it's using the wrong license.

To fix this, open any Office app and sign out of your account. Then go to Preferences > Accounts and sign in with the account that holds your Office 2021 license. After signing in, restart the app to apply the changes.

If the issue continues, a clean reinstall may help. You can uninstall Office manually by deleting the apps from your Applications folder. Then reinstall Office 2021 from your original purchase source, such as the Microsoft Store or the installer file you received. Once reinstalled, activate it using your product key or the Microsoft account associated with your purchase.

Kind regards,

John Oli

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