Everytime I try to load a return it says the file is corrupted

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
February 22, 2025
2 replies
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For 2024 Premier TurboTax everytime I try to load a return even one I literally just saved from the same year and application, the application is unable to load it and keeps saying the file is "corrupted".

This is the desktop version and I've already tried restarting my taxes 4 or 5 times and I don't want to attempt again if it's just going to force me to restart every time.

SteamTrain

Employee

Hard to know...But

Make sure you are saving the file to your main computer's drive, and not to some usb-attached device. Saving to an attached/remote device has been known to scramble/corrupt the data.

____________*Answers are correct to the best of my knowledge when posted, but should not be considered to be legal or official tax advice.*

lacstohAuthor

I only have a single drive so that's not the issue. All the files are being saved to the default location as well.

SteamTrain

Employee

Hope you re loading form the actual TTX startup screen, and not double-clicking on the file in the Windows or Mac file explorer.

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If on Windows...

1) Make sure it's not a Read-Only directory

2) When starting TTX, try rt-clicking on the TTX icon and selecting "Run as Administrator"

........ that sometimes fixes some strange stuff...but if it works, you might have to do that every time.

3) Try a manual update (takes a while to install):

Manually Update TurboTax for Windows Software

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4) IF MAC I got nothing

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In either case...Customer Support is what's left....unless someone else chimes in with a bright idea:

How do I contact TurboTax?

____________*Answers are correct to the best of my knowledge when posted, but should not be considered to be legal or official tax advice.*

jcox7483

There is a fundamental flaw that causes some customer's TurboTax to not actually save any data to the save file. It reads as corrupt when you try to open it but if you examine the file itself you'll see that it has almost no size and opening it with a text editor it's almost blank, just a tiny bit of data is there. No one ever notices that the file is blank because it has just enough data to open as corrupt in TT, but the issue is with TT not saving on some customer machines. Once it happens it seems to be permanent.

No trick to opening the file will work because the file itself was saved basically blank. Whenever you try saving your file, check it before closing TT and you'll see it's tiny in size, too small to have any data.

This comes up a few times each year and these threads get revived from the dead again and again. For a handful of people each year there is no fix and the only solution is to move to another software.

I personally couldn't get a refund when this happened to me despite weeks of trying. I tried calling any number I could find - the last 3 years at least, it was not possible to connect with a human on any phone tree. I tried Twitter - someone said they would look into it and then disappeared. I obviously tried here - the only answer is a canned message and advice to call support which doesn't work because there is no support. I ended up having to do a chargeback after 4 weeks of trying and having already filed my taxes with another provider.