How to Find a TurboTax Return on a Hard Drive

Locating old files on your computer's hard drive can seem like a tedious task. If you're searching for an old income tax return file created by TurboTax, it's important to know how TurboTax saves the file. TurboTax returns are saved on your computer using the TAX format. In addition, some versions of TurboTax add the tax year to the end of the file. For instance, if your income tax return is from 2009, your income tax return could have the file format .AX2009. The file format of your tax file depends on the version and year of TurboTax you used to prepare your income taxes.

Instructions

1. Click the Windows orb and click "Computer."

2. Right-click your computer's hard drive and click "Explore." Generally, your computer's hard drive is labeled drive "C:."

3. Type ".tax" in the search bar at the top of the window.

4. Scroll through the results and locate your TurboTax return. Your tax return file should be named something similar to "2010 Smith A Tax Return" or "2010 Smith A Form 1040 Individual Tax Return."

5. Double-click the file to open it with TurboTax. If you don't have TurboTax installed on your computer, you must install it before attempting to open the file. If your tax return is from the year 2010, you must have TurboTax 2010 installed on your computer before you can open the file.

Tips & Warnings

• Save your income tax return as a PDF file each year. If you uninstall TurboTax, you'll still be able to view your return without the program. You can save your return as a PDF using the TurboTax program.

References

• FILExt: File Extension TAX
• File Info: .TAX2009 File Extension