Purchased Office 365 twice this year & receive message cannot update software too old

Question

Purchased Office 365 twice this year & receive message cannot update software too old. I have a Mac. I cannot locate what to do. I need to update the software. Not paying for it again. I installed it on my Macbook Pro 2025 when purchased 9 months ago, and bought it again out of desperation two months ago. Please help.

Answer 1

Hello, thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Q&A.

If you have an active Office 365 subscription and you’re running it on a MacBook Pro 2025 with the latest macOS software (Tahoe 26.3), but you see a message saying “You need to update macOS to run Office apps,” here’s what you can do:

1. Quit all Office applications.
2. Open Finder > Applications.
3. Use Command button +click to select all of the Microsoft 365 for Mac applications.
4. Ctrl+click the application you selected and click Move to Trash.

Once done, in the Finder, click GO in the menu bar and go to folder - ~/Library/Containers/

Delete the folders starting with,

com.microsoft.Word

com.microsoft.Excel

com.microsoft.Powerpoint

com.microsoft.Outlook

com.microsoft.OneNote

Go back to the Library folder and open Group Containers. if present, and Move to Trash.

UBF8T346G9.ms

UBF8T346G9.Office

Once done, sign in with your Microsoft account here to reinstall the Office apps.

https://account.microsoft.com/services

If you are still having issues, please share the complete screenshot of the error message here.