Office Problems with new 10.9.2 upgrade on MacBook

Question

Upgraded my MacBook to 10.9.2 and now Office 2004 would run because PowerPC apps are no longer supported.  Is there a patch? Can I downgrade? I don't want to buy a new office because of this crappy upgrade, an upgrade I really don't need.

Answer 1

You could try iWorks (pages, etc) as an affordable alternative that
would work in Mavericks OS X 10.9.2; or see if one of the office-
like applications, such as LibreOffice, NeoOffice, etc may work..
Some of those being open source, are low-cost or free. They are
not an exact match for Office documents, but can come close.
Another path would be to read up on how to run an older OS X
in your computer in a virtualisation mode (Parallels, VMWare?)
then install Snow Leopard 10.5(.8) from a DVD. This may or
may not require a server version of Snow Leopard. Then be
sure this older OS X has 'rosetta' enabled to use PPC apps.
A different route would be to get a second older Mac, perhaps
a vintage MacBook 13-inch, and get $20 retail SnowLeopard
DVD, and so perhaps for as little as $400. you could do that.
I see rebuilt MacBooks with an OS X for about that much
from reliable companies whose business is repairing Macs.
{PS: if you have an external HDD of faster spin rate or an SSD
with Thunderbolt connections, perhaps a fresh install of the
older OS X so you can use it that way. Short of a partition in
a larger internal hard disk drive, that won't mess with the 10.9.
If the computer supports FW800 or USB3.0 it may work OK.}
Good luck & happy computing!
edited