City employees endured a major inconvenience Tuesday when the city's email system crashed in the early morning and was out of commission all day.

"One of the servers recognized something as a virus that was not a virus. But because the server recognized it as a virus, it froze," said city spokeswoman Susan Straub.

It did not affect police or fire communications or calls to 9-1-1. LexCall was not affected, because it uses a separate system to take complaints or requests.

The city's technology department was working on the problem Tuesday, and Straub said she expected the system to be up and running Wednesday morning.

Beverly Fortune: (859) 231-3251. Twitter: @BFortune2010