Hi! I have installed the home version on my machine and up to now no problems. Recently installed MS Office 2003. Used Excel once, saved a spreadsheet, tried to open the file, and got a pop-up which explained that the file could not be opened because my virus scanner detected a problem.
I can’t figure a way around this…anybody have an idea? Thanks for any help!
Can you try to open it again and take a screen shot of the error message and post it here?
It’s strange, I mean, avast does not have such exactly error or virus message…
Welcome to the forums, luna3. 
If you have trouble posting a screen shot on the forums, you can read the post at the link below …
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=8982.0
The pop-up is not by Avast, it is in MS Excel.
Excel won’t open the file because the program thinks the Avast scanner has
detected a problem.
There is no indication of a virus.
???
This is the text from the Excel pop-up:
"You may be encoutering this message because an anti-virus program is not allowing the file to open. This can be caused by one of two conditions. Either the anti-virus program needs to be updated (due to a compability problem with this application) or there is a virus in the file but the anti-virus program cannot properly remove or process the virus it has found.
In either case, the file you are attempting to open should be treated as infected until you have updated your anti-virus software to the latest updates available from the vendor. All major anti-virus software manufacturers have created updates to address known compatibility problems with Office applications. They also usually provide a virus signature file that is available for download from the Internet and must be updated regularly to properly scan for all known forms of viruses.
If you are experiencing this problem on a computer where a new version of anti-virus software was recently installed from a CD-ROM, it is advised to connect to the Internet and download the latest updates available from the vendor.
If you are experiencing this problem on a computer where the latest version of the software is installed, all signature files are up to date, and the file will not open (but other files do) then it is very likely the file is infected with a virus and the anti-virus program cannot remove the infection.
There is also the possibility the file is corrupt (damaged) and cannot be properly handled by either the anti-virus software or the affected Office application. In this case, it may be necessary to attempt recovery of the file using the related recovery utilities that may be available with the application (not all applications have file recovery or repair capabilities).
For more information about this issue, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article 835404"
I even turned off the scanner and the spreadsheet still would not open!
If avast! detects a file as infected (and denies access to it), it clearly announces that by showing the “Virus found!” dialog.
So, I think this problem has nothing to do with avast! (and the fact that the same thing occurs even if avast! resident protection is disabled only confirms this).
Did you have another antivirus installed previously, that may not have been fully uninstalled?
None…used to have Norton. But I will go through the machine again and look for
leftovers. This is driving me nuts.
A link worth looking at, which is a program removal tool that can remove the remnants of a number of different Norton Programs:
Removing your Norton program using SymNRT
Good news…problem solved. Yup, Norton was the culprit. Found stuff in the registry.
Thanks for the support!
No problem, glad we could help, a belated welcome to the forums.