Hi, maglib. Thanks for your reply; it was helpful. I appreciate it.
I must admit, however, that I am very surprised by and disappointed with your answer. I, and probably many other TurboTax users, had no idea that TurboTax is automatically saving our tax file – even if we don’t want it to be saved. We might be going into our file just to review something, or just to print out something, or just to do a what-if calculation that we don’t want saved. Yet, TurboTax is automatically saving the file -- without notifying us. I wonder if this is a new policy this year, or one that is in effect only after we e-file our return, because I never noticed this auto-save process in prior years.
What makes it extra confusing is that during the usual exit-from-TurboTax process, the program always asks, “Do you want to save this file?” So of course the users think – erroneously -- they are in total control of when their tax file is and is not saved. They are not.
I tried to figure out whether the auto-save operates every time you open your tax file. It seems like only certain actions will trigger the auto-save. One of them is when you have TurboTax do another review of the return for missing data. Another is when you have TurboTax check your e-file status. But the auto-save function appears not to operate all the time. This makes things more confusing (is my file saved or not?).
Once, I looked in Windows Explorer and saw that I had a series of TurboTax files with slightly different Modified time. The Modified date and time is important to me because that’s how I know I have the final file used to e-file my return. Once I complete the e-file, I make a backup copy of that final TurboTax file, so now I have two files with the exact same date and time. I don’t save these final files again because I don’t want to change their date and time (nor do I update the software again). But now I learn I can’t even open the file again for fear of changing the date and time.
I feel TurboTax should eliminate this auto-save function. (Besides, isn’t it redundant because we already have the tilde backup file that is automatically created by the program?) TurboTax should trust the users to know when to save and not save their own tax file. Every other software I know puts the users in control of when to save their files. (It’s their files, right?) Besides, it’s our neck that’s on the line if the IRS comes calling.
