Office Home & Student 2021 files now only working in compatibility mode

Question

Office Home & Student 2021 Word documents are suddenly and mysteriously only working in compatibility mode so I cannot amend them or even copy the contents into new documents. There is a message at the top of the document asking me to activate Microsoft 365 to create and edit the file. I have tried to fix by reinstalling Office Home & Student 2021 as well as other suggestions I found on forums but nothing seems to work. Please help!

Answer 1

Hi @Emma Goude,

Does this issue occur with all of your Word files or with specific files? It may be because the documents were created in an earlier version of Office. Check that via going to File >> Info >> Inspect Document >> Check Compatibility. You can try saving the document in the current version of Word format by selecting "Save As" and choosing the current version of Word format to resolve this issue. See this article for more information: Converting documents to a newer format.

If this issue still persists, try opening Word in safe mode. Let us know if there is any progress in this thread. Thanks:)

Have a good day.

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Answer 2

Hi @Emma Goude,

If the above answer doesn't work, you can try repairing your Office installation by following these steps:

1. Open the "Control Panel" on your computer.
2. Click on "Programs and Features".
3. Find "Microsoft Office Home & Student 2021" in the list of installed programs and select it.
4. Click on "Change" at the top of the list.
5. Select "Quick Repair" and click "Repair" to start the repair process.

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Answer 3

Compatibility mode only means that the document was initially created in an older version of Word than the version you are currently using (or that it was intentionally saved so that it should be compatible with an older file format).

The big problem here is the activation message you are seeing. A deactivated installation won't let you edit any of your Office files. See https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/unlicensed-product-and-activation-errors-in-office-0d23d3c0-c19c-4b2f-9845-5344fedc4380 .