Activation 2019????

[greggd29]

Incredible work people!  THANK U! If you can’t get Turbo to ACTIVATE on a NEW WINDOWS MACHINE - you need to go to settings>display>display resolution and TEMPORARILY change it to 800x600.   Worked like a CHARM✅    My default Inspiron 7506 (Jan 2021 purchase) was 1920x1080.

Can I just say to TT and MSFT - “get your 💩 together BEFORE dropping this 💩 on your customers.  OMG 😡

[Jo5832]

This resolution solution worked for me, thanks for posting it

[jtracy1947]

I had the same issue but eventually got a error message that my disk missing code to go any further  (not exact words) so I had to send it back to Intuit and received a check the other day (almost a month wait).  Bought another disk yesterday and Now I'm having the same problem with this disk as mentioned in this string.

So I'm just starting to try the things I've just learned may help. I got to the page requesting me to enter my license code but it wouldn't allow an entry.  JUST SAYING MAYBE ANOTHER BAD DISK (Home & Business).

[mhymowitz]

This is still an issue with TT2021 H&B.  I tried the 800x600 trick but the input box would not let me type or paste my activation code.

VERY FRUSTRATING

[mesquitebean]

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@mhymowitz wrote:

This is still an issue with TT2021 H&B.  I tried the 800x600 trick but the input box would not let me type or paste my activation code.

VERY FRUSTRATING

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Did you try stepping up to the next lower resolution such as 1024 x 768 ?   Also be sure the Scaling setting in your Windows display settings is set to 100%.   And after changing the resolution and scaling, close TurboTax and relaunch it.

A couple users reported anecdotally that they could put the cursor right under the input box and slowly move the cursor down a bit, and once it changed shape they blindly clicked to paste the code, and they found that it "took."

If it still doesn't let you enter the code, phone TurboTax Support to ask for assistance and to voice a complaint.

Hours are currently 5AM-5PM Pacific (8AM-8PM Eastern) Monday-Friday.

You can use this contact form to get a phone number, or it may schedule a callback.
https://support.turbotax.intuit.com/contact

[RHinCT]

That this problem remains a year later is absolutely absurd!

I too was getting the empty activation window with the 2021 version I downloaded today, a Black Friday deal.  It took a bunch of googling to find this thread, and a fair amount of additional messing around to get it to work.

My PC is very new, a laptop recently upgraded to Windows 11.  I run dual monitors.  The laptop's native resolution is 2560x1600.  My main display is a wide monitor, 2560x1080.  I moved the frozen window to the laptop screen and changed that to 800x600.  The blankness was replaced with a place to type the code and some buttons, but it was not possible to type in the box provided.  I tried other resolutions, including 1024x768.  Eventually the box appeared WITH THE CODE FILLED IN.  Apparently one of my earlier attempts at pasting it worked, but it couldn't show me that it worked any more than it showed me that I could type in the box.  In any event I did succeed in registering.

Someone should be fired over this, and I am not exaggerating.  Probably more than one.  Possibly much more than one.  Intuit had MORE THAN A YEAR to get this problem SOLVED.  Instead a NEW RELEASE of an annual product REPEATS the failures of the one from a year earlier.  Somehow, somewhere, in what I am sure is a labyrinth of management and confused responsibilities, this was ignored.  Even if the problem was supposed to be handled by some peon programmer, the responsibility lies in management.  The team responsible for the install did not do their job.  The testing group didn't do their job.  The management of Turbo Tax development did not do their job, which is to make sure the work gets done correctly.

[mhymowitz]

Yep, FBOW TT is the best personal tax product I know of...and inertia is a strong force...but Intuit has gotten lazy and does not deserve its near-monopoly.  Sad.

[villi]

i need  a link to download state. I can not purchase inside the software due to a persistent Sterilization error! Please Help!

[mesquitebean]

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@ villi wrote:

i need  a link to download state. I can not purchase inside the software due to a persistent Sterilization error! Please Help!

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Since you said "purchase inside the software", is this a second state program that you need to add?  Some of the desktop products include a state program as part of the package (for the first state).   The Deluxe Edition can come either way--with or without a state program.  And Basic Edition does not have a state program included.

In any case, you probably need to talk to TurboTax Support about your issues on Monday.

Hours 5AM-5PM Mon-Fri.

You can use this contact form to get a phone number, or it may schedule a callback.
https://support.turbotax.intuit.com/contact

[villi]

No, this is the 1st state. 

[VolvoGirl]

In Deluxe and above you get 1 free state program download.   Keep waiting.   The states are not ready yet. 

[RoseKo]

Here is another thread that explains the potential solution in more detail - the blank activation screen, how you can't see yourself typing the code into the box or pressing activate, etc. I had to mess with this for 15 minutes and I could not tell you what happened to make it finally work. (I changed the resolution settings a few times, then hit control v and return without seeing anything, then changed the settings again, and it finally worked.)  https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/taxes/discussion/what-do-i-do-when-i-get-a-blank-activation-screen...

Very frustrating! I have no idea how a help desk would get a user through this.

[villi]

This finally, after nearly 3 hours and 2 calls later, Not to mention a couple years of dealing with this Serialization runtime error, this seems to have been resolved with a work around and manipulation of the screen resolution. The work around is the fact that I have been asking for the state download executable (alone) to be sent to me and had been told by every TT support person that you can only get it through the fed download, which is a very tedious exercise. After repairing, uninstalling, reinstalling, several times, a supervisor finally sent me the direct state download that I had been requesting all along, and it worked very quickly. She also led me to play around with the screen resolution. She found that mine was very high (300%), which I was not experiencing from my vantage point. It looked to be a normal on my surface pro. However from her end, using screen sharing feature, she said that it was gigantic (apparently). The funny thing is that I had been on at least 2 screen sharing calls before hers and no one had mentioned that the screen was oversized on their end. As a result of the download of the state executable I was able to move forward with my taxes (2020), and also for the 1st time in a few years, I did not run into the "runtime error re Serialization" after the install. Now was this due to getting the State software downloaded,  or playing with the screen resolution to make it much too small, but viewable with glasses? I suspect that both helped because I completed the state return from previous years and the Serialization problem persisted. I believe I was sent the state download as a work around in previous years as well. The only difference in the runtime error was playing around with the screen resolution. Hope this is helpful for those who are suffering from this ridiculous error that TT claims is not their issue,  (and maybe it isn't) but at least TT should know that it's happening and maybe offer some solution to try. This supervisor never even heard of the problem. Thankfully she got it working!

[Tom H1]

The 2020 Installation problem is still present in the TT2021.  I was going crazy trying to install my Turbotax Deluxe 2021 Fed/State on my Win10 machine, until I ran across this post that told me to change the screen resolution to 800x600.  It worked!

I kept getting to the install screen when I would receive a message that said that the installer had stopped responding.  I actually had to tell it to retry two times before it worked, but for the first time, I saw the install bar start moving.  I was able to successfully install this years turbotax .  

The post instructions said:

• change your resolution to 800 x 600 (start>setting >system resolution. once it's been changed, your screen size will look very big. REMEMBER your initial resolution setting!
• launch TT and the activation screen should launch.  copy / paste in your activation code. you should get the 'all set' green check mark
• change your resolution back to what is was originally. 

It's an easy fix.  Try it.

[jimrummings]

Cannot get PC to activate the new 2012 TurboTax via download.  I have the code.