File and folder exclusions do not always seem to work

Issue
You have added file and folder exclusions to Sophos Anti-Virus for Windows. However, it seems as though the files and folders are still sometimes scanned.

First seen in
Sophos Anti-Virus for Windows 2000+ 7.6.21

Cause
This happens because the operating system sometimes accesses a file or folder using its long path, and sometimes its short path.

What to do

You can configure exclusions locally or use the Console to configure exclusions centrally on managed computers.

To ensure that exclusions are always applied, enter the exclusion using both the long and short paths. All possible combinations must be excluded:

• Example 1:  to exclude C:\Program Files\Sophos, you must exclude:
C:\Program Files\Sophos\
C:\Progra~1\Sophos\
• Example 2: To exclude a folder with a long name (i.e. that does not conform to the 8.3 format), you have to exclude all possible variants of the name. For example, to exclude C:\program files\sophos, you must also enter C:\progra~1\sophos in the exclusions list. (Note, this advice only applies to Sophos Anti-Virus versions earlier than 9.)