I am having problems with recognizing my 2016 tax return to carry over to 2017. It's currently in pdf format

[TurboTax-Esther]

You can not carry forward from a PDF. 

If you used turbo tax last year, you can sign in with the same user name and password and carry the 2016 file forward. 

If you used the desktop version last year and are using the online version this year, when it asks to select a file to import, use the .tt16 file. (not the pdf)