1

Hello,

I have just upgraded to Avast Antivirus Free 17, and got once again the unwanted anti-spam toolbar in MS Outlook 2003 : no warning given, no questions asked, no option to uninstall in Components.

Exactly like when I “upgraded” to version 16. I had delayed upgrading to 17, fearing that it might break something, and here we are. Again this very old problem. Mentioned here by myself :

https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=188505.msg1325431#msg1325431

And in countless other threads before. See the screenshot in my 2016 post, it’s exactly the same thing now. Any ideas to nix that toolbar from Outlook ? And to prevent it from reappearing at the next upgrade ?

2

does this help? https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-disable-avast-outlook-plugin

https://www.google.nl/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=how+to+remove+avast+spam+toolbar+in+outlook

3

Thank you, Pondus. The Techwalla solution does not work, because the Avast toolbar does not appear as an add-in in the relevant section of Outlook. The others… well, I’ve tried many of them, which don’t work.

In the meantime, I dug into my notes and found something that works, so I’m sharing it here in case it helps.
Settings / Troubleshooting / Enable Avast Self-defence Module = No

Delete, rename or move away the two different asOutExt.dll files you will find 1) at the root of Avast install folder, 2) in the folder called x64.

Settings / Troubleshooting / Enable Avast Self-defence Module = Yes

Maybe reboot after that.

That’s it. It’s probably the method I used when I was caught after “upgrading” to v.16. Still, this obnoxiousness of Avast insisting that you “upgrade” just to foist unwanted “enhancements” upon you (and forcing you to re-learn the user interface, with new names for the same functions) is beyond irritating.

Oh, and also : this method gets rid of the Avast anti-spam toolbar in Outlook 2003, but does it break the mail shield function in other ways ? I’ll have to rely that it does not.