Outlook 2013 Autocomplete File Is Infected

[Michael Durthaler]

I happened to notice an email in my auto complete from Chad Shelton <MyName@SEC-PC.kornet> and naturally got curious. Googling Chad Shelton, he's an American Opera Tenor. Don't know him, this email address got placed into my Auto Complete List.

Finally finding this article, I see why I can't just open and edit the list. Well, I want to find all suspicious entries in Auto Complete and delete only *those* but get *all* of them removed.

My list is obviously infected. How do I *disinfect* it? Microsoft's idea of encrypting this data is very good but somebody's cracked the code, perhaps?

Do let me know how to view the list, select and delete any and all suspicious entries. i don't want to zap the file, just clean it.

Thanks!

Mike

 

[rst75]

If you need to "disinfect" it, you can reset the list. This is in File, Options, Mail - under the Send Messages group is a button for Empty Auto-complete list. It's maybe halfway down the page. The other option is to delete names from the list as they show up.

FWIW, I have never heard of any virus or exploit that would "infect" the autocomplete list. There really is no purpose to it. Outlook adds names to the list that you send mail to and if there are names you've never sent mail to, then maybe your computer is infected. The only problem is that it is really hard for spammers to use Outlook to send mail. Installing a smtp server and sending in the background is much easier.