Think I got it!!!!!!
So, all of your comments and replies have been very helpful for me to follow. I finally gave up on all the uninstall and reinstall. There's something really weird about what this program does to the Mac OS. I have experienced everything you have all noted, starting with the famous crash after attempting to continue filing (and paying for audit defense!) But the secret for me was to forget about the reinstalls and create a brand new user on the mac. By doing so, the library and other supporting data is "clean."
Note that when doing this, the applications folder is still visible to the "new user". So after logging in with the new account, I launched TT from the applications folder and lo and behold, it didn't crash. Checked for all updates and finished.
The way I got the data file to the "new user" was to put it in the applications folder where it was also visible to the new user and then move it to the new user documents folder. My next step was to open everything up and print all forms and supporting data to a pdf - in case it will crash again when trying to file. If that happens, I plan to use the printed info in the pdf to fill out the tax forms in the online version. I got the TT representative that I called a week ago when all this started to document in the notes that if I couldn't go further, I would get a credit for the online version.
I haven't filed yet, but it looks quite hopeful at this point since I have no more error checking or any other stuff to do before filing. Good luck. Let me know if this all works for you.
