I have Turbotax Deluxe 2019 on a Mac running Catalina (10.5) Whenever I got to print (PDF), Turbotax stops responding and I get the spinning wheel. I let it sit for over an hour and it didn't revive.
Please help!!
Did you update to 10.15.3? There have been several reports that Apple broke something in that update that affects TurboTax and other print functions.
You can contact customer support to see if they have any additional information.
There is no single published number because it changes contently depending on the nature of the call and agent availability. Following the link below will either give a current number for you to call or take your number for a callback.
(Note that phone support is for paying customers only. There is no phone support for Free Customers.)
Here is a TurboTax FAQ for contacting customer support.
https://ttlc.intuit.com/questions/1899263-what-is-the-turbotax-phone-number
It’s not a Mac OS thing, as I’m experiencing the same on High Sierra 10.13.6 (YES, still a supported OS for Turbotax…).
ALL FEDERAL FORMS print just FINE to either an actual printer or a PDF, but NO state form will work - you never get to the “printer dialog” box, so somewhere in the “state” tax engine somthing has gone astray in the Intuit end of things.
Intuit - please get to the bottom of this, printing is an important feature!!!
@mlohrer wrote:
It’s not a Mac OS thing, as I’m experiencing the same on High Sierra 10.13.6 (YES, still a supported OS for Turbotax…).
ALL FEDERAL FORMS print just FINE to either an actual printer or a PDF, but NO state form will work - you never get to the “printer dialog” box, so somewhere in the “state” tax engine somthing has gone astray in the Intuit end of things.
Intuit - please get to the bottom of this, printing is an important feature!!!
I am running 10.13.6 and have printed state forms for two different states with no problem. Are you using the File -> Print -> and then select what you want to print?
Have you restarted the Mac?
Hmmm, that is interesting and problematic:
(1) Yes, the computer has been restarted numerous times, and everything is also "up to date".
(2) I too have multiple states - Massachusetts and Vermont - and NEITHER prints from several different returns.
(3) But Federal prints just fine from ALL returns...
(4) Have tried this via the File->Print route as well as the "Print Active Form" route - again, always works with a Federal form, never works with a VT or MA form from any return...
(5) Finally, have tried with the actual printer selected in the "Page Setup" as well as the "any printer" option - all to no avail!
Any other ideas and I'll try them!!
And again, the "failure" is the system never gets to the "Printer" dialog box, just hangs on the "print..." setup phase, whereas with FEDERAL it moves right along with the dialog box appearing, and one can select the printer or PDF or page range, etc...
Again, thanks in advance for any other advice...
@mlohrer wrote:
And again, the "failure" is the system never gets to the "Printer" dialog box, just hangs on the "print..." setup phase, whereas with FEDERAL it moves right along with the dialog box appearing, and one can select the printer or PDF or page range, etc...
Again, thanks in advance for any other advice...
What state is that? There might be a some problem with that particular state. (I only have two states that I can test).
Troubleshooting help for printing has been provided for you below. If you are still having trouble also try clearing your cache and restart.
Massachusetts (MA) and Vermont (VT) are the 2 states I have and I'm NOT able to print forms from either, exact same failure of the system to actually move from an initial "printing" box to the full "Printer Dialog" box.
FYI: the system has been restarted NUMEROUS times, the printer cache has been cleared, the printer is up to date...all the usual suggestions are simply not applicable.
Furthermore, the important point is that FEDERAL forms all print just fine, demonstrating that the printer is not malfunctioning, nor is the queue is messed up...none of that stuff.
Suspect that there is a common "system handoff" to the CUPS printing subsystem that is employed in some number of state programs, and that hand-off is not correct per some latest revision. States which DO work have a different hand-off methodology, apparently...
Lindsey,
(1) You might be under the MISimpression that this problem is related to "online" printing activities - NOPE! So, no "browser cache clearing" involved!!!
(2) I'm pretty darn familiar with "how to save" a PDF - in fact, I CAN do it just fine with ANY FEDERAL form here and NOW! But, as explained already, if I do the EXACT SAME THING with a MA or VT form, information or fileable, makes no difference, it will not print...that simple.
And…I have just now compelted migrating my entire setup to another Mac system which is running Mojave 10.14.6.
Results are EXACTLY the same:
-printing or “printing to a PDF” of Federal forms is all fine...
-printing an MA or VT form is NOT possible….
To the Turbo Tax Expert employees monitoring this discussion - please forward this to your software group….
Many, many thanks
Since you are continuing to have problems, please click on the Contact Us form https://support.turbotax.intuit.com/contact/. We’ll help you connect with the right expert for your specific problem.
@mlohrer I installed both MA and VT on my OSX 10.13.6 and made a dummy return with part time residency in MA and VT with only W-2 income in each and both states printed fine. If it fails on both 10.15 and 10.14 for you then I would assume that it would fail on 10.13 also.
Do you have special circumstances, income from other sources other than W-2 or special forms, etc. in your return that I might test for?
Wow, first thanks for that effort and second MOST interesting!
(FYI: my first platform is also 10.13.6, and yes, it's failing on that.)
But, my testing on the 10.14 platform was also with a "dummy" return having essentially nothing, just tried to print the "Personal Information" page to no avail.
The "real" returns do indeed have numerous other income sources, lots of Schedule B and D entries, a few other complications as well, but again, that being a cause is difficult to see.
This issue is actually present in numerous different returns, most of which are ONLY Federal and MA (that's where this problem first occurred), then one with VT as well.
With your result, I will back up and try again with some very simple dummy setups, but there is something clearly curious here.
Lastly, thought it might be related to the printer, but the 10.13 and 10.14 platforms have DIFFERENT printers - what "printer" are you referencing?
Thanks again, let me see if I can make some headway based on your finding....
I am printing this way. But the type of printer should make no difference (I don't think you even need to have a printer) for the print dialog box (which is a Mac function, not TurboTax. TurboTax only converts the tax data to a pdf format and then sent it to the standard Mac print function that should bring up the Mac dialog box (2nd screenshot) where you can either select a printer, save it as a pdf or send it to preview.
You indicated before (I think that it spins it's wheels/or crashes and you never even get the Mac print dialog box which indicated a problem in the pdf conversion process.
The Utilities -> Console, crash report "might" shed some light on where it is crashing.
Very distressing…agree with everything you list:
(1) the printing is a Mac function at that point, and NO I don’t get the dialog box.
(2) I can print as you show, or via the “Print Active Form” option just below that, or even via the “Preview” function. All of those work fine if I am only referencing the Federal forms.
(3) As soon as I include any MA or VT form, never gets to that dialog box, just the “spinning wheel of death” and I need to force a quit.
Using the console’s a good idea, will try that route, but again ultimately I am forcing the quit so might be tough to sort out beforehand where its hanging up…but worth looking into.
(4) Finally, dumbed down my “dummy” return to the absolute basics, so very few forms, just info forms, a few others, and it is the same result, so it’s not some inter-form linkage.
The spinning beach ball is not a crash but a process that has taken too much time to complete. It can be caused by lack of memory, too many processes running or a loop within a process. Since this has occurred on more then one system, I would suspect the latter, but that can be very difficult to trouble shoot without the source code. You can use the Utilities -> Activity Monitor and select the "hung process" and the so a "Sample" that will show the looping functions. Sometimes just the function names will give a hint - other times that exercise is useless.
Well, your advice re Console reminded me of too many previous Mac system episodes:
(1) Of course you are absolutely correct about the spinning ball, and looking thru various logs I could see that the Turbotax process kept getting hang events…no surprise there.
(2) I’ve experienced before that simply monitoring a problem with the Console running changes things enough that problems get solved…so off we went with the Console in the background.
(3) System hangs as previously, but then suddenly the printing handoff to the Mac gets going!
(4) Once that worked its way thru, now I can kill Console and all functions as it should!
(5) To make sure I wasn’t dreaming, repeated this whole exercise with Console on my “dummy” 10.14 setup, with the same result. Even did a power cycle/restart, and the solution seems to persist, so for now I’m good to go!
I do thank you for pointing me in the right direction - be surprised if this doesn't arise for some others as well.
Great - perhaps you were not wait long enough for the process to complete.
Hmmm...waiting 10 to 15 minutes ought to be long enough!
Furthermore, now that some "handshake" has been cleared, the system's response times is the few seconds it should be from "Print" selection to bringing the dialog box up...
There were a few posts recently from others who were having the same experience, and I think one of the users said he waited the day!
Definitely something amiss, but hopeful this will keep it under control...
I am unclear. Are you saying that got it to work and print? I am not sure just what you did to do that.
And what do you mean "handshake" has been cleared?
I am trying to figure out just where the "hang up" was and what you did to clear it?
[edited]
Will try to clarify, it's NOT a satisfying solution:
(1) Looking at various logs (SYSTEM and others) via Console, "hang" events were regularly reported for the Turbotax process, followed sometime later then by my "forced quit" crash. WHAT exactly was hanging I can not report, just that the Turbotax process encountered a "hang" event.
(2) I started Turbotax YET again, tried to print state documents, and ended up in the same "stalled" spinning wheel state.
(3) I THEN started Console to see where we were hung up, but after just a few seconds the spinning wheel ended and the printer dialog box appeared -- no further insight into why with Console running whatever was stalled was allowed to proceed...but this is a "solution" I have actually experienced a few times in the past with "printer" related issues on software, not just Turbotax...
(4) This was all done first on the dummy system I had set up, which wasn't going to help much with actual returns. SO, I repeated that "vague" process on my original 10.13 system - printing state form results in spinning wheel, starting Console allows process to proceed and printer dialog appears.
(5) On both systems, I then proceeded to retest this WITHOUT Console, and on both systems the printer dialog appeared within seconds of "printing" a state-related form. This "fix" was then tested through full power off/power on restarts on both systems, and Turbotax continues to run correctly, by which I mean printing state forms results in a printer dialog box immediately.
All in all, not a particularly "actionable" problem solution, I understand, can only suggest others try it if in similar circumstances.
Appreciate all your interest and suggestions, hope for Turbotax this is a "one time" event, but since it happened on 2 completely independent systems of mine, going to hazard a guess that it will come up again...
Not sure how to do this via this forum, but if you can send me an email I could forward you the Turbotax 2019...macbook.hang log, really very uninformative to me, a snippet:
Date/Time: 2020-02-20 15:56:34 -0500
End time: 2020-02-20 15:56:36 -0500
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.14.6 (Build 18G3020)
Architecture: x86_64
Report Version: 28
Data Source: Stackshots
Shared Cache: 0x240e0000 945B37AF-A705-3F7D-8D[phone number removed]61
Shared Cache: 0 7B9711B1-CACF-3055-9CB4-615AE1637F77
Command: TurboTax 2019
Path: /Applications/TurboTax Home Business 2019.app/Contents/MacOS/TurboTax 2019
Identifier: com.intuit.turbotax.2019
Version: 2019.r18.033 (2019.r18.033)
Parent: launchd [1]
PID: 95356
Event: hang
Duration: 2.19s
Steps: 22 (100ms sampling interval)
Hardware model: MacBookPro9,2
Active cpus: 4
Time Awake Since Boot: 150000s
Time Since Wake: 910s
Fan speed: 2000 rpm
.....followed by stack info...
Glad you got it to print. I doubt the log would do me much good.
I have seen other reports of print hangs and some have said that restarting the Mac in the "save mode" allowed printing. The safe mode disables addons and extensions, start up apps and only loads the system fonts.
That leads me to suspect an interaction (or a resource hog) by some other process that prevents the TurboTax print routine to complete. It might even be a nonstandard font that is installed (or some other software instillation installed) that is not comparable.
This type of hang can be hard to pinpoint until a method is found to reproduce it at will until the source of the problem is found.
Safemode is indeed a useful "crutch", at least often lets you get something critical done, but as you say can be very tough and time-consuming to pinpoint these types of things.
My problem is at least temporarily solved, although I will not be too surprised if it re-emerges after an update of Turbotax or two.
My two systems being completely different, very little software or setup overlap, but each exhibiting the issues, makes me suspect something more fundamental in Turbotax's internal call structure to process state info.
Fortunately, I can now move on to what I was actually trying to get done - some tax returns!
Again, thanks, your inputs really were instrumental in moving me in the right direction.