I recently updated the operating system on my 2020 MacBook Air from Ventura 13.6.6 to Sonoma 14.7.1, as I was experiencing significant slowdowns with my email browsers. Fortunately, the upgrade resolved that issue. However, I've noticed that my Microsoft Word and Excel documents from 2021 now take over 30 seconds to open, and I often encounter a spinning beach ball. This delay also occurs when trying to open JPG files.
Interestingly, my 2021 Mac Studio operates with the same version of Microsoft Office from 2021 and the same Sonoma OS, yet I’m not facing any of the issues with Word and Excel that I encounter on my 2020 Mac Air.
I dedicated more than an hour with a senior support technician from Microsoft in an attempt to resolve the issue. We uninstalled all the troublesome Microsoft Office applications from 2021, along with their related 'containers', and then installed the most recent versions available on the Microsoft website. Additionally, we disabled all automatic updates and background cloud saves to ensure that nothing was operating in the background. Despite these efforts, the issues continue to persist.
I discovered a couple of Reddit threads going back 8 months that document exactly the same problems that I’ve been experiencing, namely: Office 2021 is not compatible with Mac OS Sonoma. Apparently, some folks have had success by running earlier versions of Microsoft Word/Excel. But I'm not ready to try that quite yet.
Apple technicians are suggesting that I upgrade my Mac Air to the Sequoia OS, but I'd rather keep both of my computers on the same operating system. I typically wait about six months after a new OS is launched before I decide to update, as a precaution. My 2021 Mac Studio is running Microsoft Word and Excel perfectly well on Sonoma, so I don't see any reason to change things up.
What are your thoughts?
