Me again. I poked around until I found a reference to the background of the App and permissions. What I did was go to Finder>applications> (pick your app that is not opening) >Get Info (from the right click drop down of options) open the "Sharing & Permissions:" and unlock the little padlock on the bottom right corner to Add (Me) to list with Read & Write privilege. It works, Yes, I am able to pull up my files but the icon is still whited out.... so DISCLAIMER: I have no idea what will happen next time Microsoft has an update for this app when it tries to download and change it.

In December when Microsoft updates came through Excel did not need to change and so that was the one that now said "You do not have permission to open the application “Microsoft Word.app”." To be able to get my Excel back I ended up working with a Microsoft rep for a half a day on removing my apps and reloading them. NOW, Last night the Microsoft updates came through and now Word is the one that did not have to update so now it is whited out in the Dock and says the error phrase copied above. I cannot go through that again as I use this for work. Also the suggestion for what worked in the last comment is not understood by me as to how I would do that?