TaxmannEA Posted March 3, 2020 Report Share Posted March 3, 2020 I'm getting an error message that is preventing me from forming an e-file on a return. It says: 1040... Estimate .....On sheet '1' you entered a value of ". When I click in the message, it sends me to P.1 of the 1040. I have no idea what it's trying to tell me. There are no estimates on the return. I've checked every input sheet and have come up empty. Any ideas? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pacun Posted March 3, 2020 Report Share Posted March 3, 2020 It is not a wierd error... it is a wierd character that you have entered on the form. Look carefully and you will find it... delete it and you will be ok. It could be a space or a period. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abby Normal Posted March 3, 2020 Report Share Posted March 3, 2020 Look for a pink field which is the sign of an estimate. You may have accidentally pressed the F4 key. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TaxmannEA Posted March 3, 2020 Author Report Share Posted March 3, 2020 I guess I'm just dense. When I click on the error message, it takes me to the 1040 which has no direct input fields. There are no pink override fields anywhere on the return. The error started showing up when I added a billing invoice to the return. I've deleted that and it's still there. I'm still trying to figure out what "sheet 1" is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medlin Software, Dennis Posted March 3, 2020 Report Share Posted March 3, 2020 17 hours ago, TaxmannEA said: On sheet '1' you entered a value of ". (Maybe something here will trigger you to find the issue...) What Pacun said. As a programmer, the message looks like an issue with some sort of entry. I would have expected double quotes, with the the quotes containing the incorrect/invalid data. However, it could be the error message cannot make sense out of the invalid/incorrect data, a piece of data is blank, or the piece of data has an invalid character. Since the message used apostrophe's around the sheet number, maybe the programmer does not use quotes in error messages (which can be a good thing, as quotes can sometimes get interpreted strangely and displayed strangely) and the actual bad data is a field containing a quote or double apostrophe... I will sometimes type a quote or apostrophe by mistake, since it is next to the enter/return key on my keyboard. I don't use ATX, but I have seen here it is spreadsheet based, so maybe the error could be fairly low level, referring to a "sheet" used to store the data? If the billing invoice is the last thing you added, review it, and remove any/all punctuation. When posting or sharing error messages, with anyone, make use of screen capture (or cell phone picture app) and supply an image of the entire message. (W10 has a great screen capture function, which allows highlighting!). At least for me, every error message has unique text describing the error, so I can easily search for and find the spot in the code where the error was shown. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abby Normal Posted March 3, 2020 Report Share Posted March 3, 2020 2 hours ago, TaxmannEA said: I guess I'm just dense. When I click on the error message, it takes me to the 1040 which has no direct input fields. There are no pink override fields anywhere on the return. The error started showing up when I added a billing invoice to the return. I've deleted that and it's still there. I'm still trying to figure out what "sheet 1" is. ATX sometimes jumps to the wrong form on errors. One thing I learned after a few years was if you single click on a error, the cursor will be put in the field that is a problem. For some reason, I started out double clicking error messages, which does not . Now that's dense! A screen capture of the 1040 might help, but you'll have to cut off the name fields, and if the error relates to the name field, we won't be able to see it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medlin Software, Dennis Posted March 3, 2020 Report Share Posted March 3, 2020 Win+Shift+S is the key command to open the W10 screen cut. You can free form cut, and you can open, in the clipboard, what you cut for editing. (Nothing personal implied by what I shaded in my paste, just showing an example of the capabilities.) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Catherine Posted March 3, 2020 Report Share Posted March 3, 2020 THANK YOU, @Medlin Software for that shortcut! @TaxmannEA the spurious character might be a SPACE. Impossible to see. If you can find the right screen, start with the first entry field and highlight it, hit "Delete" tab to next, rinse and repeat for all fields on that screen. Faster to do than to explain - but it should work, once you're on the right screen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medlin Software, Dennis Posted March 3, 2020 Report Share Posted March 3, 2020 Programming for unexpected data entry is a huge chunk of time... and sometimes gets overlooked. Then again, one can program for expected input, then find the wonks who make the rules allow something other than what the forms shows on its face! 2020 W4, step 3 for example... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jklcpa Posted March 3, 2020 Report Share Posted March 3, 2020 37 minutes ago, Medlin Software said: Win+Shift+S is the key command to open the W10 screen cut. You can free form cut, and you can open, in the clipboard, what you cut for editing. (Nothing personal implied by what I shaded in my paste, just showing an example of the capabilities.) We've gone totally off-topic here, and hope that the OP will have resolved his error. I have a question on the above combo for grabbing a partial window snip. I still have the old snipping tool and that does work that I use occasionally. When I launch that it also has a popup that mentions the Win+Shift+S shortcut. At your mention I tried this shortcut today and had a free form cutout, but my window was greyed out and no tools or new window appeared that would allow me to save, modify, or paste it into another document. Instead, it totally disabled all functions on my machine. I couldn't exit my browser with the red "X", couldn't close any windows by right-clicking on the task bar's icons, clicking on the Win logo was disabled. I tried to open the task manager with Alt-Ctrl-Del and it was hidden behind the greyed out browser window and couldn't access that either. The only way to get out of this mess was Alt-Ctrl-Del and at the blue screen before launching task manager again, I used the power "button" to do a complete restart. Any ideas why this happened? I'm running v 1909 without any other issues so far. I was hoping this would be an easy and quick snip, but was a total fail here. I don't think I'll be trying it any time soon again. I find screenshots much easier on my tablet, much easier than anything I have through Win10. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abby Normal Posted March 4, 2020 Report Share Posted March 4, 2020 On 3/3/2020 at 10:48 AM, Abby Normal said: Look for a pink field which is the sign of an estimate. You may have accidentally pressed the F4 key. My bad. It's purple. At least to my eyes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TaxmannEA Posted March 6, 2020 Author Report Share Posted March 6, 2020 I've found the purple field. It's a box at the top of the 1040 that links to the Injured Spouse form. I can't seem to restore or delete anything to remove the color. Looks like I'll have to roll the client over from 2018 and re-enter all of the data. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abby Normal Posted March 6, 2020 Report Share Posted March 6, 2020 15 minutes ago, TaxmannEA said: I've found the purple field. It's a box at the top of the 1040 that links to the Injured Spouse form. I can't seem to restore or delete anything to remove the color. Looks like I'll have to roll the client over from 2018 and re-enter all of the data. Right click on the field and choose Restore. Or click on the field and press F4 function key. I just tried it and the menu method does not work, but the F4 does. Hooray for keyboard shortcuts! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pacun Posted March 6, 2020 Report Share Posted March 6, 2020 16 minutes ago, TaxmannEA said: I've found the purple field. It's a box at the top of the 1040 that links to the Injured Spouse form. I can't seem to restore or delete anything to remove the color. Looks like I'll have to roll the client over from 2018 and re-enter all of the data. That happens when you don't enter the date of birth of the taxpayer, you have not selected a filing status, or you have an entry (character) on the second line of 1040 reserved for the spouse. If you do have an entry, restoring will not do the trick.... you will have to remove that character or entry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abby Normal Posted March 6, 2020 Report Share Posted March 6, 2020 The other useful function keys are: F2 Highlight entry toggle F3 Form Instructions F4 Mark/unmark as Estimate F6 Jump to F7 Crossreference (kinda the same as F6) F8 Calculator F9 Recalculate Shift+Ctrl+F12 Deprec Calcs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abby Normal Posted March 6, 2020 Report Share Posted March 6, 2020 Of the three ways to restore that field (right-click menu, Ctrl+R and F4), only F4 works. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TaxmannEA Posted March 9, 2020 Author Report Share Posted March 9, 2020 Thank you Abby! F4 worked. Life is good again! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.