Follow this format and save it in notepad or as a .txt file and then
you can import the files. I save them in a file on my desktop after
I reformat them to this format, and they import with ease.
MasterCook – Formatting Using the “@@@@@” Method
Recipe By : http://www.blarg.net/~msrooby/index.html
Serving Size : 1 Preparation Time :0:00
Categories :
Amount Measure Ingredient — Preparation Method
——– ———— ——————————–
***** NONE *****
HAND-FORMATTING USING THE “@@@@@” METHOD
“@@@@@” Formatting for MC3, Mac and PC Versions:
This might look complicated, but trust me, after you’ve done it a
couple of times it’s like breathing.
If you see a recipe on a web page that you want, choose ‘file’,
then ‘save as’ in your browser. (Make sure you are saving to a
folder/directory that you can locate later, such as “C:\Recipes”)
Save the page as plain text, showing .txt as the file extension.
Example: creampie.txt. Later, clean up the HTML characters and get
rid of unnecessary stuff.
You can also type recipes (if you don’t have Mastercook) in this
format, and users of MC3 and MC4 will be able to import directly to
their files.
Here’s how to do it:
1st line: Type 5 “@” signs.
2nd line: Recipe title.
3rd line: Blank. *
4th line: This is the notes section. You must have something here,
even if all you have is NOTES.
5th line: Blank. *
6th line: Start your ingredient list. Be sure to use same format as
MC uses, as in “2 cups whole wheat flour”, etc. Each ingredient goes
on its own line.
Next line: Blank. *
Next line: Start your directions.
* VERY IMPORTANT: These lines must be truly blank. Occasionally you
will have ‘invisible’ characters in those lines. To prevent
frustration, you may want to get in the habit of deleting blank lines
and putting new
(really!) blank lines in yourself. Also, if you have trouble
importing a recipe formatted this way, chances are you’ve missed a
line with ‘invisible’ characters, so that is the first thing you
should check.
EXAMPLE:
@@@@@
Green Tomato Chutney
NOTES: Julee Rosso, “Great Good Food”
5 juniper berries
4 whole cloves
4 c. coarsely diced green tomatoes
2 c. thinly sliced onion
2 c. coarsely chopped unpeeled tart apples
3/4 c. packed light brown sugar
1/2 c. golden raisins
1/4 c. cider vinegar
2 tbsp. minced fresh ginger
1 garlic clove, minced
Tie juniper berries and cloves together in cheesecloth bag. Place in
large stock pot with remaining ingredients and 1/2 cup water. Bring
to boil, reduce heat, and simmer until thick (1-1/2 hours). Discard
spice bag; taste and adjust seasonings. Cool chutney at room
temperature; cover and refrigerate.
You can do some editing at this level, or you can wait until you have
imported the recipe into Mastercook and do all of it at one time.
(For example, I would change the ‘c.’ to ‘cup’ in the above recipe
before importing.)
Also: if you have several recipes in a file, you can format them
consecutively. Leave a blank line after the recipe, then start over
with
the “@@@@@” and continue.
To import these recipes, simply open MC3 or MC4, open the cookbook
you desire to place them in, and choose ‘import’ from the menu. Point
MC to the directory containing the recipe, and follow the directions
for importing. At this point you will need to put the ‘servings’ in
the servings field, and do any editing that is necessary, like
including the source of the recipe, and putting the recipe into the
desired categories.
Note for Mastercook 4 users:
1. To prevent the problem of the (not really) blank lines as
mentioned above, you can use a ‘pipe’ character ( | ) at the
beginning of blank lines. This masks the hidden characters. (To make
the | character, hit shift + \ on your keyboard.)
2. The ‘NOTES’ section is not necessary if using the PC versions of
MC4 higher than 4.0. (IF YOUR PC VERSION OF MASTERCOOK READS VERSION
4.0, YOU MUST GO TO THE SIERRA WEB SITE AND DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL THE
CURRENT PATCH.) Please note that as of the writing of this FAQ Mac
users MUST continue to use the
‘NOTES’ line.
3. There is now a ‘delimiter’ to use at the end of a recipe. On the
next line immediatly following the end of the recipe, type “_____”
(five underscores). This elimates any other information contained in
a web page or mailing list post from being included at import.
Thus, the recipe above could be formatted as so:
@@@@@
Green Tomato Chutney
|
NOTES: Julee Rosso, “Great Good Food”
|
5 juniper berries
4 whole cloves
4 c. coarsely diced green tomatoes
2 c. thinly sliced onion
2 c. coarsely chopped unpeeled tart apples
3/4 c. packed light brown sugar
1/2 c. golden raisins
1/4 c. cider vinegar
2 tbsp. minced fresh ginger
1 garlic clove, minced
|
Tie juniper berries and cloves together in cheesecloth bag. Place in
large stock pot with remaining ingredients and 1/2 cup water. Bring
to boil, reduce heat, and simmer until thick (1-1/2 hours). Discard
spice bag; taste and adjust seasonings. Cool chutney at room
temperature; cover and refrigerate. _____
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
NOTES : PLEASE NOTE: THIS METHOD DOES NOT WORK WITH MCII, ONLY WITH
MC3 AND MC4.
* Exported from MasterCook *
MasterCook – Importing Recipes
IMPORTING RECIPES TO MASTERCOOK
You can obtain recipes in a number of different forms via the
Internet and e-mail. Different forms need to be handled in specific
ways. For how to handle different forms, see the appropriate area
below.
.txt – plain text file. If you’re saving something posted on a web
page, save it in .txt format, not .html or .htm format
.mxp – text exported from Mastercook program. These can be imported
easily, since they are already in Mastercook format.
.mcf – proprietary Sierra format; these are whole cookbooks and can
be moved into your Mastercook directory, or into the subdirectory
Cookbooks if using MC4.
UNFORMATTED RECIPE (IN TEXT FORM):
You’ve found an interesting recipe on someone’s web page, or do you
have recipes that you’ve typed up by hand?
1. Save the file. Choose ‘save as’ from the top left corner of your
browser, and save the recipe as a text file, like ‘donut.txt’, to a
directory where you can later find it. (I use a directory
called ‘Recipes’)
2. You won’t be able to import this directly into Mastercook; you’ll
first have to clean it up (get rid of the html characters, etc.) and
format it using the ‘@@@@@’ hand-formatting method. (See “Formatting
Using the “@@@@@” Method. Note that the ‘@@@@@’ method will work for
MC3 and MC4, but not for MC2.)
3. Open Mastercook. I find the easiest way to import recipes is to
have a ‘cookbook’ called ‘New Import’, or something like that. (I
NEVER EVER import directly to the location I ultimately want the
recipe to be. Why?
If you import a recipe with some kind of error, you run the risk of
corrupting your entire cookbook. If you don’t have a backup of the
cookbook from before you imported the ‘bad’ recipe, you will lose all
of your hard work!)
4. With the ‘New Import’ cookbook highlighted, open the ‘import’
option from the file menu. ‘Point’ Mastercook to the desired drive,
directory, and file. Highlight the recipes you want to import, or
choose all. The recipes should then appear in your ‘New Import’
cookbook. (Note: if you have trouble with finding your files, see
details on how to ‘point’ MC to the right location below.)
5. Examine the recipes, making sure they are formatted properly and
things are where they should be. Do any editing/formatting changes.
The recipe is then ready to be moved to a more permanent location,
like
‘Recipes from the Net’. You can accomplish this by dragging and
dropping.
MASTERCOOK-FORMATTED RECIPES, (.TXT):
This is probably the majority of what you will get, if you are
swapping recipes with friends or using the mailing list to exchange
recipes.
1. Save the file. Choose ‘save as’ in your email program and save the
recipe as a text file, like ‘donut.txt’, to a directory where you can
later find it. (I use a directory called ‘Recipes’)
2. Open Mastercook. I find the easiest way to import recipes is to
have a ‘cookbook’ called
‘New Import’, or something like that.
3. With the ‘New Import’ cookbook highlighted, open the ‘import’
option from the file menu. ‘Point’ Mastercook to the desired drive,
directory, and file. Highlight the recipes you want to import, or
choose all. The recipes should then appear in your ‘New Import’
cookbook. (Note: if you have trouble with finding your files, see
details on how to ‘point’ MC to the right location below.)
4. Examine the recipes, making sure they are formatted properly and
things are where they should be. Do any editing/formatting changes.
The recipe is then ready to be moved to a more permanent location,
like ‘Recipes from the Net’. You can accomplish this by dragging and
dropping.
RECIPE(S) IN MASTERCOOK FORMAT (.MXP):
This format is what results when you use the ‘export’ feature of
Mastercook. These recipes are usually a breeze to import into your
Mastercook program.
1. Save the file to your ‘Recipes’ directory, or another location
where you can easily find it.
2. Follow instructions above, step 2 through 5.
WHOLE COOKBOOKS (.MCF):
Sometimes you will be able to access entire cookbooks via the
Internet. These cookbooks will be in various forms, and that will
determine how you handle them.
1. Cookbooks in .mcf form: The MCF extension is a Sierra-Online
proprietary extension that allows you to place that file directly
into your Mastercook directory (into the Cookbook subdirectory in
MC4) and
access it directly.
2. Cookbooks in the .mxp form: Mastercook can ‘export’ recipes in
the .mxp form, which is a text form of the recipes. The only time
I’ve had a need for this is when someone wanted an entire cookbook of
mine, but
didn’t have Mastercook.
3. Cookbooks in .zip (compressed) form: These are usually .mcf files
that have been compressed so that they take less time to send and
receive, and also cost less in connect time. To download these files,
you will have to save them on your hard drive. I personally like to
put all zip files into an empty directory, and unzip them to that
directory, so I can see EXACTLY what files were contained in the
zipped file. If you are using Win95, you can use a program called
WinZip, which is shareware and can be easily obtained through
a ‘search’ of the Internet with your browser. If you are using a Mac
system, I believe there is a program called ‘Stuffit’ that does the
same thing. (I’m a PC user, so for more Mac details you’ll need a Mac
buddy!) After ‘unzipping’ the compressed file, most likely you will
have an .mcf file, which can be handled as explained above.
LAST BUT NOT LEAST: Don’t forget to back up your cookbooks! If you
have spent several hours inputting or importing recipes, you don’t
want to lose all that work. I frequently make backups to 3.5″ disk,
and occasionally do a tape backup of all Mastercook files. If you
back up to a floppy, you only REALLY need the .mcf file. If the worst
happened, and you lost your hard drive somehow, you’ve got the
recipes and you can reinstall those.
***** DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS FOR ‘POINTING’ MASTERCOOK TO THE LOCATION
OF
YOUR TEXT FILES/RECIPES: After you’ve saved your recipe: Open
the ‘import’ menu from the ‘file’ menu in the upper left corner of
the toolbar. To find your saved text file, first select the proper
drive in the lower right corner by clicking the ‘down’ arrow and then
double-clicking on the desired drive. Then, in the window above
that, you’ll see c:\ (or d:\, etc, depending on which drive you’ve
selected). Double-click on the c:\, and it will show you all the
directories (folders) on that drive. Double-click on the desired
directory(folder). Now you should see, in the window to the left side
of the screen, your choices of text files to import. Double click on
the desired file. Now you will have another screen open, and you can
select your recipe/recipes individually or use ‘select all’. Click
on ‘ok’, and voila! the recipes are in the cookbook you had
highlighted.
IMPORTING COOKBOOKS FROM THE MASTERCOOK LIBRARY, OR OTHER SOURCES THAT
HAVE .MCF
FILES:
Choose a website and download the cookbooks you want (files with .mcf
file extensions) into a directory on your hard drive (or use floppies
if you wish) that you can find later. As in, C:\Recipes. Open
Mastercook. Create a new cookbook. Then, open one of the cookbooks
you downloaded by going to ‘file’, and ‘open’, and point MC to the
location of your downloaded cookbook. The downloaded cookbook will
appear. Now, you can highlight all the recipes and ‘drag’ them into
the cookbook. (You might want to inspect and edit the recipes as
necessary.) When you have put them where you want them, close the
cookbook you downloaded, and since the recipes are now contained in
the cookbook in MC, you may delete the .mcf file that you originally
downloaded.
Continue doing this in whatever type of organization you choose. Open
another .mcf file (cookbook), edit, and drag the recipes into your
cookbook. This way you will not have to have a separate cookbook for
each .mcf file you download.