Thank you for the suggestion, AmyC, but this did not work either. I switched into Forms mode and edited the corresponding worksheet directly, but as soon as I switched back to Step-by-Step mode, I was placed right back in the loop with no way out.
I want to document for the record here that I also called Turbotax phone support and was on with two agents for over an hour, but they were also unable to resolve this issue; they just had me running around in circles, always ending up in the same loop. At one point they said they found a solution online, but it turns out they were just reading this very post right here: I had to assure them that I am the person who posted, and none of the suggested actions worked.
They admitted defeat and told me I'd need to delete the State filing and start over. But I did that, and the loop sprang up again. I even tried deleting the State filing, deleting the 1098-Q entry on the Federal level, and restarting the state filing, but somehow the 1098-Q data reappeared.
The only way I was able to ultimately file my return was to start completely from scratch, on an entirely new return, and to not even enter the 1098-Q details this time. This cost me a lot of time and effort and I'm not happy that I had to leave out a valid form from my return just because Turbotax couldn't deal with it properly.
Terrible, terrible experience. My advice to anyone reading this thread is to steer clear of this product if you have anything other than a basic return to file. Support really dropped the ball on this: how can a company as big and rich as Intuit just say "we don't know" to a problem in their software like this, right in the middle of filing season. Truly shameful.
