Why can I not SAVE my Excel doc all of a sudden?

Question

Trying to save an Excel doc and program has now removed SAVE options after using the program for years. It's requesting Activation!?! Tried to enter our known account and pw but it says it is not recognized. Verified that the account is here: https://m365.cloud.microsoft/?auth=1 and I will now lose all of the info I (RE)entered because this happened recently and inadvertently exited without it (auto)saving or saving. Read pop up window today requiring Activation.

We bought this version of MS Office (16.89.1) for Mac previously and have used it successfully till now.
What is the remedy that won't require us to BUY or subscribe and still use MS Office. Not willing to "upgrade" to MS365 at this time.

Thank you

Answer 1

 Dear@MSpll,

Thank you for reaching out Q&A Forum! 

Sorry to hear that you have experienced this inconvenient situation when using Office products. We understand that the save options in your Excel have been removed.

Based on your information, when Office apps are unable to save or perform automatic saving and request activation, it means Microsoft wants to verify whether your account has a valid subscriptions or licenses —either personal or business. If your account is not recognized, you should re-check your subscriptions to ensure they are available for use with Office apps. 

Based on our research, to check the subscriptions for your Office installation for personal, please try to follow below steps: 

1. Go to My Sign-Ins > Sign in your Account > Click on your account avatar and choose view profile 
2. Choose the Subscriptions tab 
3. You will see a list of subscriptions that you have applied for. 

 For business account, if you are an Admin, please try to follow below steps: 

1. Microsoft 365 admin center with your Admin credentials. 
2. Choose Billing > select Licenses.   
   

To check subscriptions on a Mac, you can try the following steps:

1. Sign in https://portal.office.com/account/?ref=Harmony
2. Choose the Subscriptions tab > Then you can view your list of subscriptions.

Assume if your account has email addresses end with @hotmail.com, @live.com, @outlook.com - personal account, subscriptions will only have two options as below: 

Visit the link for your reference: Compare All Microsoft 365 Plans (Formerly Office 365) - Microsoft Store

Assume if for your account has email addresses end with @domain.com - for business. There are a lot of subscription options in Microsoft 365 Business Plans and Pricing | Microsoft 365

If you require the use of MS Office without buying or subscribing, currently, there are no available options for all devices. 

To better assist you, could you please provide us a screenshot as below photo? 

Please try the following steps to take a screenshot:

1. Open a new Excel file > Click on the Excel tab.
2. Choose About Microsoft Excel, then take a screenshot.

Understanding your use case in more detail will help us recommend the most efficient and compatible solution.

---

 If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".    

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.   

Answer 2

The "Private messages" icon above is inoperable and I have not been able to access it nor receive any further assistance towards resolving our problem with the sudden inability to SAVE our documents in our previously purchased version of Excel. Can you please advise?
Thank you