Most antivirus programs also include an email scanning module. They usually work by scanning the mail as it passes through the Internet connection and warn you if mail is infected. If you follow all of the steps above and use the auto-protect feature of your antivirus program, you should be safe without the early warning email scanning provides, eliminating some of the problems they cause.

If you think you might be infected, use an Internet scanner. New viruses and Trojans often are programmed to disable antivirus programs, so you don't know you are infected. Most major antivirus vendors have online scanning available, use one if you are concerned that you could be infected.

If you follow these basic steps, you shouldn't have a problem with viruses and if everyone follows these steps, you won't have any viruses in your inbox to delete.

Diane Poremsky is the president of CDOLive LLC and a Microsoft Outlook MVP. She's coauthor of Word 2002: The Complete Reference (Osborne, 2001) and Beginning Visual Basic 6 Application Development (for Wrox Press). For questions or suggestions for future columns, write her at outlook@cdolive.com.