ok, i guess I will respond to my own message.
if you switch displays or switch landscape and let it revert back the contents of the activation window will be visible. For me, even then the text field to enter the activation code is still stimpled out and will not accept input. Ignore what you see.
- Click in the activation code field
- Enter your license key (you will not see the text you entered, so type it correctly, without the hyphens)
- Click on Activate button
Even if the contents of the activation screen is blank, you can still get it to work
- mouse around the left side of the screen, perhaps 1/3 of the way in, and when your cursor changes to an "insert" cursor, kinda looks like an capital i with bars at top and bottom, you are hovering over the field
- click in the field, be careful not to move the cursor when you are clicking and move out of the field.
- Enter your license key (you will not see the text you entered, so type it correctly, without the hyphens)
- Mouse towards the lower right of the window, perhaps 1/4 of the way in from the side, and when you cursor changes shape to a link cursor (hand with a finger pointing out), click
This worked for me.
I was trying to install 2021 turbotax, but gave back and tried to install 2020, and had the same activation screen problem. I think this shows the lack of configuration testing that Intuit is doing. When I used to be in app testing, we would have about 100 machines of different configurations. The testing was automated and would validate what was visible on the screen. That this problem has gone back to 2019 and still not been fixed is very concerning. My laptop is a standard lenovo, with intel evo, only standard apps such as outlook and quicken.
