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Find Your Tax File (Windows)

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Find Your Tax File (Windows)

Updated: 11/18/2009

Article ID: 596

This article explains how to find your TurboTax Desktop tax return file on a Windows computer.

TurboTax Online returns are automatically saved on Intuit servers, but you can use the instructions below if you also saved your TurboTax Online tax file to your computer. However, you will need to have the Desktop version installed to be able to open the tax file.

Important: To open your tax file, you need to use the same tax-year version of TurboTax. For example, to look at your 2008 tax return, you need to use TurboTax 2008, not TurboTax 2009 (otherwise you'll get Error Code 539).

Finding Your Tax File

Follow these steps for Windows 7 or Vista:

Click the Start menu button.
Type .tax2009 (.tax2008 for 2008 files) or .tax (for 2007 or earlier files) in the Start Search field at the bottom of the menu. As you type, matching files will appear in the Search pane.
Make a note of the file's location or path. By default, TurboTax saves tax files in the My Documents folder.
From the TurboTax File menu, choose Open, and then browse to the file's location on your computer to open it.

Follow these steps for Windows XP:

Click the Start menu button, choose Search > For Files or Folders and then click All Files and Folders.
Type .tax2009 (.tax2008 for 2008 files) or .tax (for 2007 or earlier files) in the All or part of the file name field.
Click Search. Matching files will appear in the Search pane.
Make a note of the file's location or path. By default, TurboTax saves tax files in the My Documents folder.
From the TurboTax File menu, choose Open, and then browse to the file's location on your computer to open it.

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