How do I turn off autosave for 2024?

[Fred_R]

This is a very real problem and has been reported by others for a few years now.

I have observed that autosave occurs regardless of the on/off state of MacOS System settings: “Ask to keep changes when closing documents”.  I have verified that autosave is happening by observing the modification date of the original file while using the TT App. It periodically overwrites your original file while the App is being used.

In my opinion this autosave problem can adversely affect customers using the Mac desktop version.  The problem begins when the TT App periodically saves your tax file without asking.  When the file is saved, it then defeats the ability to perform “Revert changes” later when Quitting the App.

The most serious customer impact occurs when you Quit the App and still get prompted with an option to “Revert changes”.  If you select that, you assume your file will be reverted back to when you first opened the file, BUT in fact it has been modified (by TT autosave) and you don’t realize it. Worse, you do not get a message that “Revert changes” was ineffective. Your tax file may now be corrupted with undesired entries and you don’t realize it. You could possibly file a return with incorrect data because of this design flaw.

I suggest Intuit provide a new App setting that allows users to toggle on/off the autosave feature for desktop versions. Ensure that both the App and the MacOS honor the  "Save or Revert" function when Quitting the App.

[PSko]

This was helpful.  The worst "feature" of any financial application or spreadsheet is Autosave. I have no idea why anyone would care to use it, but maybe some people out there just never make mistakes.  Turbotax software should have an opt-in for autosave, but never default to it.

[galgier]

I agree.  The first thing I do with tools like Excel and Word is to turn off autosave.  A single accidental keypress can destroy hours of work.

When I did my e-file, I quit Turbotax found the file, did a "get info" and checked the "Lock" checkbox.   An attempt to make changes and then quit caused TT to alert me to the file being locked.  It then offered to either Unlock or to Revert.  I chose Revert and quit.   I looked at the file info and it had unlocked the file anyway!   If I make a file read-only no program should be changing the mode of the file behind my back.

It seems there is no way to protect your files.   I even used a command line to "chmod a-w taxfile..." and it modified it by saving it to a temporary file, deleting the original and renaming.

This all seems to be "Grandma rules".   Lets make sure the file gets saved, whether the user wants it or not because we know better.