Works 2000 reinstall on iMac, have product key still

[Nor]

I have all the disks, but no reader on the Mac. Can't I go to a site to download, provide my product key to install? I had to upgrade the make op sys from Sierra to Catalina, and lost all ability to use Word and Excell. Can someone help me with this? Thanks.

[Driftwood]

Be just about a collectors item now.

[wainuitech]

The MAC version will be the Sticking point, Windows is easy to get the ISO (s)

https://archive.org/search.php?query=Microsoft+Works

You may just have to attach a external optical Drive, or take your CD's to someone who has a drive and copy them off to USB.

What you are asking about entering your Product Key and getting a download, that is possible but only with Supported Software. Looking for software that's basically 20 Years out of Production -- not going to happen.

[Safari]

Prior to Catalina Apple supported both 32 and 64 bit programs which is why Works 2000 was working with Sierra.
With Catalina only 64 bit are supported so you may find you have some other things that don't work as well unless you are able to upgrade to new 64 bit versions.

[piroska]

Just use one of the free suites instead. Works....ugh.

[Agent_24]

Works 2000 is 20 years old and Catalina was released only a year ago.

While backwards compatibility is pretty good with Apple and Microsoft in general, trying to install a 20 year old program on a very recent OS is, in the software world, like trying to drive a horse & carriage on the autobahn - if nothing crashes you'll be very lucky!

I would certainly recommend giving something like LibreOffice a try instead.