Oy!! Sorry it takes me so long to get back to you. I can’t always get to the puter. ANYhooo… I did as you suggested and opened MS Outlook (It didn’t happen before because I never use it. Always use Express.) and now I can send and receive mail with the Avast settings. I’m assuming that’s possible in part because I put in the correct SMTP settings in the avast settings console. It is still NOT scanning mail however. During all my playing around while attempting to send and receive mail, I paused the outlook/exchange provider. The “resume provider” option is non-functional for some reason and for the life of me I can’t figure out how to re-activate the thing…can’t find anything in the help section either. This is the free version, btw. I don’t have a special e-mail scanning icon in the system tray…just the little blue " a sphere", which swirls occasionally.

Thanks, btw, for your help so far. I think you’re making progress with this dummy….