Thanks for the reply, Gandalf, but those workarounds did not work. Being a paid subscriber of Avast, I have really harassed Avast Customer Support for nearly three weeks; I am pleased to advise I now finally have a resolution to my problem. Here is what Avast sent me and I’m pleased to announce I am now able to send emails via Outlook 2010.

I hope this fix helps others also:

You should configure your client to connect securely to your server using your providers ssl ports, the default ones are:

pop3: pop3.mailserver.com (port 995, ssl)
smtp: smtp.mailserver.com (port 465, ssl)
imap: imap.mailserver.com (port 993, ssl)

Please see our kb article
http://www.avast.com/faq.php?article=AVKB91#artTitle

Also disable SSL scanning in avast! user interface:
Settings - Active Protection - Mail Shield - SSL scanning

If I can be of any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me again.

With Kind Regards,

Lukas Havel
Technical Support Specialist