Moving MS Office 2011 from Mojave computer to older High Sierria machine

Question

I want to upgrade my Mojave iMac to Catalina. I have a few 32 bit apps that won't work so I am migrating them over to an older iMac running High Sierra. I have successfully migrated two applications (Aperture and Photoshop).

However, I'm not having any luck migrating Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac. I cannot redownload the program because it is no longer supported by MS so I have moved over the plist and other files as recommended at https://cwl.cc/2012/02/easy-way-to-move-microsoft-office-2011-mac.html along with the /Applications/Microsoft Office 2011 folder.

However, when I try to launch any Office application, I get the following report:

Microsoft Word cannot be opened because of a problem.

In the Problem Details and System Configuration section of the report, I see:

Process:               Microsoft Word [1128]
Path:                  /Volumes/VOLUME/*/Microsoft Word.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Word
Identifier:            com.microsoft.Word
Version:               14.4.6 (14.4.6)
Build Info:            Unknown-141106~0
Code Type:             X86 (Native)
Parent Process:        ??? [1]
Responsible:           Microsoft Word [1128]
User ID:               501

Date/Time:             2020-01-18 21:41:16.948 -0500
OS Version:            Mac OS X 10.13.4 (17E199)
Report Version:        12


Time Awake Since Boot: 1500 seconds

System Integrity Protection: enabled

Notes:                 Translocated Process

Crashed Thread:        0

Exception Type:        EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Termination Reason:    DYLD, [0x1] Library missing

Application Specific Information:
dyld: launch, loading dependent libraries

Dyld Error Message:
  Library not loaded: @rpath/mbukernel.framework/Versions/14/mbukernel
  Referenced from: /Volumes/VOLUME/*/Microsoft Word.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Word
  Reason: image not found

Binary Images:
   0xb6000 -  0x1e32feb +com.microsoft.Word (14.4.6 - 14.4.6) <3A8997BD-2AAF-E42B-B1AA-610F3C008907> /var/folders/*/Microsoft Word.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Word
 0x22ab000 -  0x22f105f  dyld (551.3) <AEE46C03-FE99-3D3F-9A28-119D4A885857> /usr/lib/dyld

Anybody know how I can find this library and get it installed on the old iMac? I cannot use migration asst. because they two mac versions are different and the old iMac does not support anything OS version greater than High Sierra.

Answer 1

So moving the apps out of and back into the Microsoft Office 11 folder seems to have helped. After doing it, I got prompted to register the software over the phone (the product key no longer worked) using a lengthy number.

But I'm still seeing some weirdness with a There is a problem with the Office database error when I open an app and Outlook won't open at all. But I am closer, at least.

Answer 2

As at July 2021 - The download link no longer works, the automatic authorisation servers are gone & there is no more phone support.
Office 2011 is now dead.

I recently successfully migrated Office 2011 on an old Mac Pro running Mojave, as part of a full clean install & system migration.
However the same could not be done to a newer Mac running Big Sur.
If you arrive at any point where the install needs re-authorisation, it cannot be done.