Brand new MacbookPro will not update Keynote or Numbers

Yeah I had to end up erasing and reformatting my SSD on my new 16". I was fine with it because I generally want to install my own stuff. For example I have no use for iMovie and Keynote because I bought Final Cut Pro and my office does Zoom meetings and no longer sends out PowerPoint presentations. These come preinstalled but once you erase the drive they have to be manually downloaded. My iMac is a 2011 and cannot run Catalina natively so the iWork Suite supported on it (Pages and Numbers I need) is an older version.

When I ordered my 16" the App Store already had my newer version of iWork on the server before I received the MacBook Pro. When I went to download them on the iMac it said, "You cannot install this app because it's a version your Mac does not support" so it downloaded the older version and knocked the new version off the server. When I transferred my stuff from the iMac to the 16" it conflicted the files so I couldn't update iWork on the 16".

So it's best to erase and start clean. Only transfer the 64 bit files (if you're running Catalina) and not the older iWork suite.

Best of luck to you.

Sounds like what happened is you also transferred the older versions of Pages Keynote and Numbers from older Mac. New Macs get a different version of Apple's iWork so if you transferred the iWork suite from your old Mac it won't update the apps. I went through this recently when I bought my 16" MBP.