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Sophos Anti-Virus for Windows 2000+: how to exclude items from scanning locally

Sophos Anti-Virus for Windows 2000+ allows you to use wildcards to specify file types that you want to exclude from scanning. This article describes how to locally configure Sophos Anti-Virus to exclude specified files or folders from scanning.

If a computer is managed centrally, you can use Enterprise Console to exclude items from scanning.

What to do

  1. Opening Sophos Anti-Virus
    On the computer that you want to configure, open Sophos Anti-Virus. Click 'Configure'.
  2. Choosing the type of scan for exclusions
    You must choose whether to exclude items from on-demand scanning or from on-access scanning:
    • To exclude items from on-demand scanning:
      1. Click 'On-demand extensions and exclusions...'
      2. In the 'On-demand extensions and exclusions' window, select the Exclusions tab
    • To exclude items from on-access scanning:
      1. Click 'On-access scanning...'
      2. In the On-access scan settings for this computer window, select the Exclusions tab, click 'Add....'
      3. In the 'Exclude item' dialog box, select the type of item you want to exclude. These are listed in step 3, "Selecting item type for exclusion" below.
  3. Selecting item type for exclusion
    (You do not need to use ????????.ext, as '*' (the asterisk) is a valid wildcard. However, if you want to specify only one wild character, you can use aaa?.* This excludes all files with a four-letter filename that begin with 'aaa'.)
    Click 'Add'. In the 'Exclude item' dialog box, select the type of item you want to exclude. The options are:
    • Drive
      In the 'Item name:' field, type the drive letter (e.g. C:) or browse to it. Everything on that drive will be excluded. You can also specify a mapped network drive here, but not a UNC path.
    • Folder
      In the 'Item name:' field, browse to the required folder. Note, all subfolders and files in an excluded folder are also excluded.
    • File
      In the 'Item name:' field, as with folder exclusions, you can use wildcards in file exclusions. Either browse to the file you want to exclude, or use a wildcard (e.g. to exclude all files that start with 'aaa', you can put aaa*.*).
    If you choose to exclude items from on-access scanning, you are given an additional option in the 'Exclude item' dialog box :
    • All remote files
      If you select this, your computer will not scan files that you access from the network. Use with caution.
  4. Selecting named item for exclusion
    Use 'Browse' to find the item you want to exclude, select the item and click 'OK'. The item is now displayed in the 'Item name:' field. Click 'Apply', then click 'OK'.

    If you need more information or guidance, then please contact technical support.