‘virus warning’ (Outlook XP)

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The following message has appeared lately (after I ran Ad-Aware, which is the only thing I can think that was different from my usual sequence of programs).
(see attachment) If I click on “Yes” then the dialog box disappears and I can use Outlook to send new messages (the dialog box only shows up when I select Ctrl-N for a new outgoing message). If I click on “No” I also get a blank message form so as far as sending messages, there seems to be no difference. Does it mean that one of MYprograms is accessing the address book? Or have I got something that AdAware didn’t find, since when I ran AdAware it showed no “bad stuff”?

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Joyce

This is not a virus, this is Outlook’s security at work.

What happened with the I Love you and Melyssa and all sorts of viruses that exploit e-mail to travel, and MS said, well each time you want to send a message, or even access the sent To, CC and BCC fields in VBA code, Outlook will tell you. If y are sending a message, then you need to click on the enable button, and then choose the time for that session, you can go up to 10 minutes and then hit the right button.

Its OK you are safe…

Wassim

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Thanks — I’m relieved, altho’ I can’t figure out why it started doing it quite some time after I began using Outlook! Is there any way to avoid this? I’m running Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D, Norton Personal Firewall, Norton Anti-virus. Gads — am I paranoid or what?!!

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Wait! Stop! You should click “No” when you see that dialog, unless you started a process separate from Outlook’s built-in functions that you know will access address information.

For example, macros that read information from or write information into the To, CC, or BCC fields will trigger that alert. Similarly, external applications looking up information in the Outlook contact folder will trigger it. Synchronizing with a portable device may cause it, if it has not been updated to work around the problem.

But creating a new message should NOT trigger it, unless you have an add-in or macro that does something address related when you create a new message — or you have some malware on your computer. Until we figure out what’s causing it, I think you had better assume the worst.

In another thread you said that you use Word as your e-mail editor, and you updated your signatures. Can you think of any changes you might have made that relate to the address fields? If you temporarily change from Word as your editor to the built-in Outlook editor, does the warning go away? (If so, it could be something weird in Word.)

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Ok — I’ll definitely select “No” for now. I just followed the directions from the Outlook Help menu to make Outlook my default mail client, closed the app., then re-opened and selected Ctrl-N for a new message, and it still opened Word as my e-mail program and the error dialog box showed up again. Don’t have a clue what could be happening, except I did add another contact to my list today (but I don’t remember back to Wed. when this started happening!)

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If you want to try editing with the Outlook editor, the setting actually is on the Mail Format tab of the Options dialog (Tools>Options…, in Outlook, not Word). Hope this helps.

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OK — that finally got rid of the warning dialog box. I now have Outlook XP as my e-mail program. What should I do to figure out why Word is causing the problem? Could it be that Word is the “program that is trying to access your address book”?

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> Could it be that Word is the “program that is trying to access your address book”?

Mmmmmaybe…… but unless other WordMail users say it’s normal, I really don’t know what to think. (And Microsoft certainly knows how to work around its own security restrictions, so that makes me suspicious.)

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OK — I’ll stay with Outlook as the e-mail program, since it does everything I want (at least so far!) I’ll keep doing my usual checking with AdAware, SpyBot, and Norton I’net Security and hope that nothing drastic happens!!

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OK — I’ll stay with Outlook as the e-mail program, since it does everything I want (at least so far!) I’ll keep doing my usual checking with AdAware, SpyBot, and Norton I’net Security and hope that nothing drastic happens!!

Reply | Quote

> Could it be that Word is the “program that is trying to access your address book”?

Mmmmmaybe…… but unless other WordMail users say it’s normal, I really don’t know what to think. (And Microsoft certainly knows how to work around its own security restrictions, so that makes me suspicious.)

Reply | Quote

OK — that finally got rid of the warning dialog box. I now have Outlook XP as my e-mail program. What should I do to figure out why Word is causing the problem? Could it be that Word is the “program that is trying to access your address book”?

Reply | Quote

If you want to try editing with the Outlook editor, the setting actually is on the Mail Format tab of the Options dialog (Tools>Options…, in Outlook, not Word). Hope this helps.

Reply | Quote

Ok — I’ll definitely select “No” for now. I just followed the directions from the Outlook Help menu to make Outlook my default mail client, closed the app., then re-opened and selected Ctrl-N for a new message, and it still opened Word as my e-mail program and the error dialog box showed up again. Don’t have a clue what could be happening, except I did add another contact to my list today (but I don’t remember back to Wed. when this started happening!)

Reply | Quote

Wait! Stop! You should click “No” when you see that dialog, unless you started a process separate from Outlook’s built-in functions that you know will access address information.

For example, macros that read information from or write information into the To, CC, or BCC fields will trigger that alert. Similarly, external applications looking up information in the Outlook contact folder will trigger it. Synchronizing with a portable device may cause it, if it has not been updated to work around the problem.

But creating a new message should NOT trigger it, unless you have an add-in or macro that does something address related when you create a new message — or you have some malware on your computer. Until we figure out what’s causing it, I think you had better assume the worst.

In another thread you said that you use Word as your e-mail editor, and you updated your signatures. Can you think of any changes you might have made that relate to the address fields? If you temporarily change from Word as your editor to the built-in Outlook editor, does the warning go away? (If so, it could be something weird in Word.)

Reply | Quote

Thanks — I’m relieved, altho’ I can’t figure out why it started doing it quite some time after I began using Outlook! Is there any way to avoid this? I’m running Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D, Norton Personal Firewall, Norton Anti-virus. Gads — am I paranoid or what?!!

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Wassim, I think you are making a big assumption that Joyce is doing some kind of automation. The way I read her message, she is simply creating a blank new message, which should never, in itself, trigger that dialog.

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Joyce

This is not a virus, this is Outlook’s security at work.

What happened with the I Love you and Melyssa and all sorts of viruses that exploit e-mail to travel, and MS said, well each time you want to send a message, or even access the sent To, CC and BCC fields in VBA code, Outlook will tell you. If y are sending a message, then you need to click on the enable button, and then choose the time for that session, you can go up to 10 minutes and then hit the right button.

Its OK you are safe…

Wassim

Reply | Quote