Win 8.1 64 VM on U21.04, MS Word 2010 32 and Acrobat 11 problem

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LaurenzBo
Posts: 3
Joined: 26. May 2020, 18:46

Win 8.1 64 VM on U21.04, MS Word 2010 32 and Acrobat 11 problem

Post by LaurenzBo »

I have a strange problem with Office 2010 32 running in a virtual Windows 8.1 64 box (version 6.1.26 r145957 Qt5.15.2) on Ubuntu 21.04 Wayland.
I use MS Word 2010 32 for sending personalised pdf's to the individual recipients (merging excel address tables with a one pager word master doc, sending the output to Acrobat 11 for mailing personalized attachments via Outlook 2010.
Worked like a dream in the previous VBox version on Ubuntu 20.10, and the same files with the same programs work as well on a up-to-date Win10 laptop in a non-virtual environment, everything with latest updates.
In the VB machine on Ubuntu 21.04 host, the merging starts, creating about 2-3 pdf's in the buffer and then asking for the temporary storage location; once setting the path (on c:/temp or d:/temp), it continues but stops when continuing to create pdfs with the message that Acrobat was not able to create the the merged files. No pdf output is produced in the assigned folder.
I tried deleting the Acrobat Add-on and reinstalling it in MS Word 2010, but no avail. Access rights to the VM folders should be no problem as well, I have full access in the explorer. The docs to be merged are on a NAS, but copying them local in the VM makes no difference.
Any ideas?
scottgus1
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Posts: 20965
Joined: 30. Dec 2009, 20:14
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows, Linux

Re: Win 8.1 64 VM on U21.04, MS Word 2010 32 and Acrobat 11 problem

Post by scottgus1 »

The only Virtualbox thing I could think of which might cause this is a use of Virtualbox Shared Folders that is no longer working.

Though Virtualbox Shared Folders are supposed to be "shared folders", long-time forum advice is to only use them for manual mouse-click drag-n-drop copying of files between host PC and VM (or possibly copy via command-line). No opening, running, saving, permissioning, databasing, etc; only copying.

If you are using Virtualbox Shared Folders and can try redirecting the output to a real shared folder made by the destination OS, does the process start working again?
LaurenzBo
Posts: 3
Joined: 26. May 2020, 18:46

Re: Win 8.1 64 VM on U21.04, MS Word 2010 32 and Acrobat 11 problem

Post by LaurenzBo »

I use five mount points of Ubuntu shared with the VB Win 8.1 guest as permanent shared folders with full access (data storage, but also data bases). This worked very well since years, even when working in these folders both from Ubuntu and VM Windows, only newly created files need sometimes a reload of the directory structure before they become visible in the other OS. So far, I never experiences any problems with this sharing. Folders of the VM in the virtual drive are not shared to the Ubuntu host, they are local only to the VM Windows. The problem with Word-Adobe bulk mail compilation occurred never until the current Ubuntu 21.04, even with 20.10 and the previous VirtualBox version, it always worked like a charm.
The output folder for the pdf's are on the virtual system drive of the host (static, not shared with the Ubuntu host). The input files are on a shared mount point (both, the word doc and the excel merging data base), both on a NAS.
The only reason I can think of is that from 20.10 to 21.04, a security improvement has been made - mount points for a user are not accessible by other users any more. Maybe the user group for VirtualBox cannot fully access the source files with the windows system process as originator due to this more restrictive access policy?
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