"Global exclusions" aren't.

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

In the virus chest (which Avast has made hard to find) adding a file to “global” exclusions actually doesn’t. It only adds an exclusion for the specific path to that one instance of the file.

Global should mean it’s excluded no matter where it is on the system. I went to update my different Autopatcher folders on a flash drive and had to add an exclusion for apup.exe for each one individually.

If I plug in a different USB drive first, then this one so its drive letter changes, Avast will be deleting apup.exe again because it’s using defined paths instead of some way of uniquely identifying a file.

It should only take creating an exception ONE TIME for a file to make Avast ignore it forever, no matter where it appears on the computer. That’s what global means.

2

Nope.
“Global” means it applies to all the shields and on-demand scans (as opposed to local exclusions that may only apply for a shield, or for a single on-demand scan etc.)
However, all the exclusions are based on a path (or mask) - so it certainly won’t work for any possible name of that file.

3

Does avast still support wild cards? If so you could use apup.exe or put a wild card where the certain drive name would be placed so long as it still points to the folder with the file in question.