I am using Debian 9.5 xfce,

I have a legal version of MS Office 2013 and I have the key. Does it load properly in VirtualBox using Windows 7? Will it be stable?

I also have a legal copy of Adobe Acrobat Pro X with license data... same question.

And before someone asks why I don't just use LibreOffice... I have 25+ years of email in PST files with nested folders and my Office version includes Outlook. I also have over ten thousand of pages of documents in Word format with footnotes plus highly complex headers and footers ... LibreOffice don't support these Word formats.

if Windows 7 handles office 2013 then I'd venture to say yes, because all you're doing in operating another OS within a OS via VBOX. DO, as you should already know, especially with something like you have, backed it up just because any OS can crap out no matter by whatever platform it is being ran, it can crash and burn.

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As BW-userx said, you're running Windows software on Windows. Not really going to be any issues.
Honestly, there's nothing about this that sounds like a good idea. Outlook PST files are notoriously junky, and highly prone to failure. There are many IMAP sync tools you can use to migrate PST files to any IMAP account, nested folders and all. And since you're running Office 2013, you can export those thousands of pages to XML, and re-import them to Libreoffice. Yes, you may have to adjust things later.

Staying on old junk software 'just because' isn't a good thing. Yes, it's a pain to upgrade/migrate...but it's a one-time pain, and you can then move forward for numerous years. Your call, of course.

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Office 2013 supported? It may be EOL (no updates)

Extended support (i.e. effectively security updates only) for Office 2013 lasts until April 11, 2023.

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Not on Debian, but used to run on Ubuntu 16.04 (and CentOS 7.5) had virtual box; ran Win 10, and Office 2016.
Did not have any problems....
Make sure host is powerful enough, and give enough resources to the VM.

Also, have couple of users on Macbook Pro with Virtual box and Win 10 and Office 2013, this setup has been in production for over a year; no problems...
Again, give enough resources to the VM.

Note: do not have PST that large, so can't give you an answer for that specific item.

I get it that you think:
and you say:
Yes mine is large as it retains over 25 years of business and personal correspondence, but in all these 25 years, I have NEVER had a failure. I do maintain a simple rule. The Inbox, contacts, notes and calendar are in one PST. Ever piece of mail saved goes into a separate PST. That simple practice has kept me stable for decades.

You say:
First I am not running IMAP. I use POP.
All I can say is that you are VERY wrong as to import of these PST files. None of them import the deeply nested folders with attachments. None of them. I wish it were possible. I have tried.

You say:
If it were 'Junk' I would agree with you but there is no piece of code in the Linux Universe that supports all the features I use in MS Word and Outlook. Sure I can cobble together things, but it will just be a kludge, a cobble, a Frankenstein. I wish it were not the case. I have been running Linux on my servers since 1994 (Slackware) and then Debian (starting in 1998). I moved most of my PCs from Debian to Mint in 2010, but started moving the PCs back to Debian starting with 8 and am now running 9.5.

Regardless of the label here, I am not a newbie when it comes to Linux. However, my attempt to run Windows in a VirtualBox with Office 2010 in 2012 was a complete disaster. The thing would just fail. My attempts to import PSTs with tools into other email products nothing but a mess. I am aware of code that allows me to read from a PST as an archive without importing it. That remains a possibility, but the books I have written do not pull up correctly in LibreOffice or OpenOffice or even fully in WPS. So to you, who may not have decades of work to preserve and use, it may be small thing to give up well crafted tools, just throw them in the ocean, and abandon your life's efforts, but I do not see MS Office as 'Junk" and no, it is not obsolete as there is not a darned thing that we have now that actually can fully replace it.

I wish there was.

If you say so. What I *CAN* tell you is that we rescue dozens of corrupted PST files every week, and there are entire FORUMS on the Microsoft tech-net dedicated to PST file recovery, because they're junk. They are a proprietary format, used by one single company, and you are at the mercy of Microsoft for ANYTHING to do with reading/recovery.
You are aware that POP email is insecure, right?
Sorry, not wrong at all. Again, IMAP supports nested folders quite well...I've got dozens of them right now. And to just pick on Google Mail, there is a SPECIFIC TOOL for GSuite that runs as a system-tray icon, and syncs contacts/calendars/emails, complete with folders and attachments. If you let it run, by the morning everything is migrated. There are also dozens of guides on how to add Gmail accounts to Outlook and export/sync whatever you'd like.
Again, your call. Office 2013 is old at this point, no matter how you slice it. And, as you're seeing, because of the proprietary nature of MS products, you can't easily move between different pieces of software. To me, that makes it 'junk'. Anything that doesn't obey pre-defined standards (even their XML isn't true XML), is junk. And you are 100% right...Word DOES have features that Libreoffice doesn't. But the reality of the situation is that it DOES have 98-99% of what Word does, with the exception of some esoteric features that aren't commonly used. I've used Openoffice/Libreoffice for well over ten years now, with zero problems of interoperability with ANYONE using Word.

The fact you say you have 'decades of work to preserve and use' on one hand, and then say 'I have to stay on a five-year old piece of proprietary software that isn't getting updates' on the other, seem to contradict each other. Again...you are at MS's mercy. PST's *ARE* well known to be unstable, and the MS Word document format is closed. If you honestly think that re-formatting means 'abandoning your lifes work', there's not much anyone can do to help you. And yes, I *DO* have decades of work that I've preserved, along with thesis and other items I've had published. And that's why I don't depend on a single, closed-source, closed-format piece of software. That's why I spent the time to migrate things. Any LATEX editor is great for books; Scrivener and Scribus are on the list as well. And I've got at least one 1,500 page LibreOffice doc that has zero problems opening, and it includes graphics and mathematical symbols.

Not arguing with you; do whatever you'd like, it's all your data. But if you're honestly concerned with preserving it, I'd go another route.

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