Turv=boTax uninstall?

Hi, Jay.

There's a fundamental difference between an accounting/bookkeeping/checkwriting program - such as Quicken - and a tax return preparation program - such as TurboTax. Accounting principles evolve slowly over decades and centuries and an accounting program can continue to meet our needs for several years. But tax laws change daily and last year's tax program can't be used to file this year's return.

So when we do upgrade our accounting program to a newer version, we probably want to remove the old version - and recent versions of Quicken automatically uninstall the prior version while installing the new one. But we very well may want to keep several years' versions of TurboTax installed, just in case we want to reload our 2004 return, for example, to see how we reported something.

Personally, I have a TurboTax folder and, within that, I have two subfolders for each year: one for that year's TT program (\TurboTax\Tax04, for example) and one for the data that went into that year's return so that I can reproduce the return if I need or want to. Since I also prepare returns for a couple of relatives, their data is also in \TurboTax\Tax04Dat, for example. When I start my '05 return, I'll install the program in \TurboTax\Tax05 and run it from there, importing prior data (name, address, SSN, etc.) from Tax04Dat and current year data (income, expenses, capital gains, etc.) from Quicken. The completed '05 return(s) will be saved in Tax05Dat.

Meantime, my Quicken 2006 Basic is working with my QDATA.* fileset which contains data from 1990 to date and totals about 30 MB now.

RC

Thanks R.C.

I have always wanted to keep several versions on hand but lacked storage space. If I am/have been really good this year I may receive a second drive of sufficient capacity for this purpose plus all the videos of our trips that I haven't yet come around to editing and publishing on DVD for all friends and family members too slow to disperse to the four winds emitting primal screams of mixed fear and boredom.

FWIW, way way back in the stone age, when TTax had its own drivers and font sets to replicate tax forms for filing, new versions would recognize the old stuff and add any new upgrades to the printing scheme sharing these utilities from version to version.

As for old returns, I very much appreciate the TTax feature to print to PDF file, which I do for both what's filed with governments and the "kitchen sink" versions with all those worksheets. That allay's any fears of losing access.

We keep old versions on disc backups and data files go back to '91 or '92, with other formats (i.e. spreadsheets) going back to early 80's. Guess I could whack all but seven years or so worth. At least that's what my wife has done to old paper files. It was stressful for a nanosecond to see canceled checks, tax returns and other "important" papers from mid-60's to mid-90's shredded into nothingness.

Again, thanks for your reply.

Jay

I've taken the following approach. It assumes you have and keep the TTAX CD's...

1) Print the federal & state returns (for submission & complete) as PDF files 2) Download the last manual updates from Intuit web page and burn to a CD 3) Uninstall last year's TTAX program.

This will allow me to re-install the program (with updates) in the event, for example, that I need to submit a correction...