Open Excel Sheet Windows Guest - Shows as HTML doc with error

[Claudio]

I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04 in my notebook (not by upgrade, but from installing it from th LiveCD) and installed VirtualBox 1.6.0. I alread have a Windows XP virtual machine (VirtualBox 1.5.6, Ubuntu 7.10) and just created a new uuid for it and it opened fine in this new environment. But something that did not ocurred before is taking place now.

I have 2 shared folder in this virtual machine: one is a linux folder in Ubuntu /home/public folder, the other is my TrueCrypt file located in my pendrive. This was my configuration in Ubuntu 7.10 with VirtualBox 1.5.6 and Windows XP guest, and it worked fine.

But, in the new environment, if a choose to open any .xls file that is located in one of those VirtualBox shared folders, from Excel in Windows virtual machine, I got not the workbook, but a message within an Excel sheet, like this:

cell A2: Proxy Encountered Error cell A3: Host Address Not Found: The proxy could not find an IP address for the host in your request. Possible causes include mistyped URL, misconfigured DNS and transient network problems.

This behavior occurs either if I select PCnet-PCI II (Am 79C970A) or PCnet-FAST III (Am79C973), in network adapter connection (using NAT). But if I select Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop (82540EM) the sheet opens normally from these shared folders.

But, in the first two configurations (PCnet) I can access and open normally any Excel sheet that's saved in a network drive of my client's LAN. And using the third choice (Intel PRO) I can't access my client's network anymore, but those sheets in VB Shared folders opens well now with Excel in the virtual machine.

I have to zip the Excel file, copy this zipped file to my C: in the WinXP machine, or to one client's network drive, to work on it. And then move it back to my VirtualBox shared folder, again zipped, to have it back in Ubuntu or my pendrive.

I tested with another kind of documents, like Word .doc, plain text files, PDF files, Zip files, and everything is ok whith these.

Anyone has a clue?

[Claudio]

screenshot after opening an excel sheet from a virtualbox shared folder

[Frank Mehnert]

This sounds quite strange. Are you sure that you are using NAT for the network adapter?

Anyway, 1.6.2 should be out in one or two days and I would appreciate if you could try this version as well as there were many fixes regarding shared folders and some networking-related fixes.

[Claudio]

Yes, I'm using NAT.

I did some tests, changing configurations, etc, and I could not get the smooth environment I had with 1.5.6 and Ubuntu 7.10.

To add more issues: yesterday I saved a plain text file from Essbase Hyperion, the outline file (it's the software I work on) in my shared folder. Then I dragged it to an Outlook email I was writing. This file arrived at destiny as an HTML file with contents completly different, like the message I got in Excel spreadsheet as I told before.

Well, if 1.6.2 is going to be launched in a couple of days, I'll wait and see. Specially if it has those fixes regarding shared folders!

Thanks for your attention.

[Claudio]

This problem persists in vrs 1.6.2.

More information: if a log on Windows with my admin account (this one doesn't access my clients network), I can work fine with Excel sheets that's in shared folders. If I log on as a user registered in my clientes network, then problem occurs.

The user registered in my clients network is tagged as "Administrator" under my users in Windows virtual machine.

[Frank Mehnert]

cmirandarj acknowledged that this bug has been fixed in 2.0.4.