…how does one respond to that?
Welcome to the forum.
Without knowing the name of the file or the file type, it’s a little hard to answer you.
Could it have been a password protected file?
Neither avast! or any other program can scan or access a file that’s PW protected without knowing the correct password.
Many programs (usually security based ones) password protect their files for legitimate reasons such as AdAware and Spybot Search & Destroy, there are others (and avast doesn’t know the password or have any way of using it even if it did know it).
When you run scans with the above programs and you delete harmful entries that they detect, a copy is kept (in quarantine/restore/backup) in case you need to reverse what you did. These are usually password protected, you should do some housekeeping and delete old backup/recovery/quarantine entries (older than two weeks or so), this will reduce the numbers of files that can’t be scanned.
By examining 1) the reason given by avast! for not being able to scan the files, 2) the location of the files, you can get an idea of what program they relate to. You may need to expand the column headings to see all the text.
Files that can’t be scanned are just that, not an indication they are suspicious/infected, just unable to be scanned.
avast tells you why they can’t be scanned, you could give a few examples of why they can’t be scanned along with the file name and location of the file that can’t be scanned.
Welcome to the forums.