Hi, i am using Microsoft outlook 2011, version 14.3.9 on my Mac. i use outlook for my business mails but facing problem of viruses. plz advise.

Question

Hi,
I have OsX 10.9 installed and use Microsoft office for Mac 2011 for my business emails. before i not installed the antivirus as i thought MAC not get infected but my IT People always advice to install the Symantec anti virus. 2 months back out e-mail server get down as my system created too many junk E-mails (as per my IT staff).
now i have installed Symantac antivirus and no such E-mails. still everytime i scan my system i get visuses detected in outlook datafile.
shall appreciate your advice on the same to avoid viruses.
Regards,
Ali.

Answer 1

Any and all viruses in your Outlook email database would be from incoming attachments. Virtually 100% of them from Windows users who forward them, or get an email virus on their end which sends out the same email to everyone in their contact list. A few randomly come in with spam, such as a fake FedEx or UPS email saying the attachment is some sort of missed delivery notice, but is actually a Windows .exe file.
Any such email viruses do not work on the Mac OS. They can't. They require .dll files in the Windows OS, and Windows as the active OS itself to work. On your Mac, they're just a small amount of wasted disk space that can't do anything. The only way you could send them out is by forwarding an email you received with the attachment still in place.
As such though, a lot of businesses require Mac users to have AV software to catch such attachments so you know they exist and don't forward them. Otherwise, OS X still has very little need of AV software.
It's also not uncommon for AV software to report false positives. The viruses Symantec is detecting could be just that. Or, they still actually are on your Mac, but you can't see them. In a very odd decision, neither Entourage, or the new replacement Outlook for Mac actually delete anything from the email database, even after you remove it from the Deleted folder.
To really clear out the database, close Outlook. Hold down the Option key and launch it again. Instead of Outlook's normal interface, you'll get this:
Most users have only the one account, so this is likely what you'll see. Click the Rebuild button. It should only take a few seconds to run. More if your email database is large. When it's done, it will show two entries. One that again simply says "Main Identity", and another with a date after it. The one with the date is the original before rebuilding.
Close the MS Database Utility and launch Outlook normally. If everything looks as it should (check out your contacts list and live email you expect to be there), then the rebuild worked as expected without creating errors in the newly rebuilt database. Close Outlook.
Now go into your user account at:
/Users/your_account/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2011 Identities/
You will find the same two folders there you saw in the utility. Main Identity, and Main Identity [date]. If you want, highlight both folders and do a Get Info (Command+I) on them and look at the size difference. If you've deleted hundreds, or thousands of emails from the Deleted folder within Outlook, especially if they were lots of attachments in them, the size difference could be huge. That difference is all of the inaccessible deleted emails that were still part of the database.
Put the Main Identity [date] folder in the trash and delete it. Now run your AV software. Any viruses that were still part of that old database are now truly gone and won't show up in a report.