Web app says Flash is out of date. Go to adobe and download newest version. back to web site same message. Help???

Each website that uses Flash has JavaScript on the page that detects Flash Player.  There's a lot of not-so-great JavaScript detection code in the world (a ridiculous amount of stuff on the web broke when we went from version 9 to 10 as an example, because a lot of detection code was only expecting single digit first numbers...). 

If you're using IE11 or Edge, changes to how those browsers identifiy themselves to and interpret JavaScript broke a lot of things as well.  Here's my generic advice for those scenarios:

First, confirm that ActiveX Filtering is configured to allow Flash content:

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/867968

Internet Explorer 11 and Edge introduce a number of changes both to how the browser identifies itself to remote web servers, and to how it processes JavaScript intended to target behaviors specific to Internet Explorer. Unfortunately, this means that content on some sites will be broken until the content provider changes their site to conform to the new development approach required by modern versions of IE.

You can try to work around these issues by using Compatibility View:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/internet-explorer/use-compatibility-view#ie=ie-11

If that is too inconvenient, using Google Chrome may be a preferable alternative.

If that doesn't apply, to give you any useful advice, I'm going to need to know more about your computer and browser, and ideally the content you're looking at:

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1195540