Microsft Outlook is a very popular e-mail program, especially on Windows 10 computers and laptops. You may be using it as well, for example at home, school or in the office.

But you may be annoyed with a recurrent pop-up message that is being displayed every so often. The pop-up says the following:

A program is trying to access e-mail address information stored in Outlook. If this is unexpected, click Deny and verify your antivirus software is up-to-date.
For more information about e-mail safety and how you might be able to avoid getting this warning, click Help.
Allow access for 1 minute.

You then have the following possibilities: Allow, Deny, or Help.

Why the pop-up is being displayed

The pop-up is likely being displayed because your antivirus program is not active: it was manually disabled, or it has encountered a problem, .. And without an active antivirus program, Outlook 2016 and later will not allow any programs to consult e-mails, calendar and contact information. The pop-up warns you that this poses a certain risk to you and your data: this is also the reason why you can only temporarily allow the program to access the information.

Stop the pop-up from appearing

Check antivirus status

Your best bet is to check your antivirus program. Open ‘Windows Defender Security Center’ in Windows 10 (via Settings) and check the status. All the different checks should be green and indicate that no actions are needed.

Restart computer

The very first action you can take is to simply restart your computer. This may already deblock your antivirus program (if it got stuck, for example). Also, upon restart, your antivirus program will check for updates so that you have the latest virus definitions.

Restarting your computer may also stop certain processes from running that triggered the popup within Outlook.

Change Outlook settings

Within Outlook, you could try fiddling with the settings. Go to ‘File’, then, ‘Options’. Then in the options window, go to Trust Center and open the Trust Center Settings.

You may notice a message at the bottom that looks like this:
Antivirus status: Invalid. This version of Windows supports antivirus detection, but not antivirus was found.

If you have the necessary rights, you could change the setting ‘Programmatic Access Security’ and set it to ‘Never warn me about suspicious activity (not recommended)’.