Immediately after ordering The Recipe System you should receive an email that says Thanks for Purchasing The Recipe System.  This email will include your license key in the Product section below the product name.  Look for a 12 digit code comprised of numbers and letters.  This key will expire within a couple of days, so use it as soon as you can.  The key is tied to the email address that was used to purchase the system and that email address must be entered correctly to unlock the system.

The Recipe System is a versatile recipe organizer designed for anyone who wants to store their own recipes digitally, edit them and then find them easily!

There is no requirement to enter your recipes in any particular way, unless you want to create standard cookbook style pdfs.  You can:

• copy and paste the entire text of a recipe including ingredients into the directions field,
• simply catalogue where a recipe is using the source field eg Madame Benoit World of Cooking page 162
• store hyperlinks in the directions field or as attachments
• connect images to the recipe as the main picture or as attachments – great for those recipes you find in magazines and getting your paper collection in the system fast!
• store videos as hyperlinks in the directions field or as attachments
• make a recipe part of an unlimited number of collections (categories) that you define
• create menus, even years in advance, using your recipes complete with the full text and images as pdfs and send to your devices
• add history (memories) or other information to a recipe
• create beautifully formatted cookbook style pdfs in one of 3 fonts with options to include/exclude certain fields
• send all of your recipes or just particular collections (categories), including hyperlinks as pdfs to your devices

Entering a recipe can be as casual as you want to make it, or you can enter as many details as you want.  And there is a great onboard help system that actually helps!

All recipe information is saved automatically unless you have checked the Confirm Changes checkbox.  This checkbox is for use only when you want to protect a finished recipe from unintended changes.

The real value of The Recipe System comes when all of your recipes are in it.

First, take a quick look at the built in Help to familiarize yourself with it. It contains detailed information on getting started, FAQs for recipe entry and booklet creation, and form by form, field by field entry details.

Next, get your paper recipes in the fastest way that you can so that you can put away the paper copies. The easiest way to do this is to take JPEG images of the paper (try to stay under 8mg as the larger image sizes take longer to load) and then store all of these images in the Documents\The Recipe System Files folder that is automatically created for you when you install the software. You can use your phone to do this. Then it’s just a matter of creating a new recipe title and linking the picture(s) to the recipe. You will then be able to find and view every recipe.

As you use each recipe you can take a few minutes to add additional information to improve the search capability or print aesthetics.

Preserve the paper copies as backup until you can verify that you have all of your recipes in the system and that they are readable. Also, if it’s a sentimental handwritten recipe – you might want to keep it permanently, but safely stored away.

Digital recipes can be copied and pasted or simply linked to as per the instructions in Help.

You can add collection tags (categories) and chapters as you get a feel for how you want to organize your recipes.  And you can always change your mind and revise your recipe organization strategy whenever you want!

The Recipe System allows you to create recipes, one at a time from a variety of sources.

The only required field is the title, after that you can include just a reference to where the recipe is found, link to an image of the recipe, you can copy and paste the entire text including ingredients into the Directions tab, you can link an unlimited number additional files like more images, pdfs, videos, urls for shopping for tools or ingredients.

You can create an unlimited number of your own categories, called collections.

You can create an unlimited number of cuisines.  The system is preloaded with most of the common cuisines.

You can create an unlimited number of ingredients used for predictive text when entering recipe ingredient lines.  The system comes preloaded with most ingredients.

You can copy recipes and then modify the copies to experiment without affecting the original recipe.

You can create cookbook-style PDF booklets with or without chapters for your custom collections (categories), for cuisines or for every recipe you own.  These booklets are customizable for image on the cover, and whether to include a picture for the recipe, a list of the attachments, history (memories, if the recipe has the field filled in) and other information (if the recipe has the field filled in).  The booklets can be printed in a modern font, traditional or script style font or saved as PDFs to send via email or to be saved in the cloud.

You can create menus by selecting recipes and then placing them in a date on the menu calendar.  You can create recipe booklets for menu date ranges that show the menus by day followed by the individual recipe printouts for each recipe for each day.  As with the other booklets, the menu booklets can be printed or sent as PDFs to the location of your choice.

All information is saved automatically unless you have checked the Confirm Changes checkbox.  This checkbox is for use only when you want to protect a finished recipe from unintended changes.

The Recipe system is a simple, flexible recipe organizer that will enable you to save recipes from anywhere in a format that you have a great deal of control over..

The Recipe System does not analyze nutritional data.  You can store calorie information for individual ingredients along with the typical unit of measure.  You can store a large amount of nutritional data – about 24 pages worth – in a single field in the recipe called Other Recipe Information.  This field can be printed as an option when creating recipe booklets but not when in view/print for individual recipes

The Recipe System can be installed on PCs with Microsoft Windows 10 or higher.  The software can also be installed on tablets running the full version of Windows 10 (not Windows 10 RT).

The system uses Microsoft Access.  If you do not have Microsoft Access, the free runtime version will be automatically installed prior to installing The Recipe System software.  Whether you have the full version or the runtime version, there is no difference in functionality for users of The Recipe System.

The system is designed to be used with screen resolutions of 1280 x 720 or higher with the scale and layout set at 100%. While larger monitors may be able to handle a larger scale, the results can be unpredictable.  Scaling issues will not be supported.

Installations on operating systems prior to Windows 10 will not be supported.

You can bring in a digital recipe from a website in seconds.  Just create a new recipe title and copy and paste all the relevant text into the directions field.   If the recipe is from a website, you could just put the hyperlink in the directions field and when you double click on it it will take you to the original site.  It’s probably safer to bring the text over in case the link location changes.

You can bring in one or more pictures by saving them into your Recipe System Files folder and then linking them using the Pictures tab for the primary picture and the Other Pictures/Attachments tab for the rest.  You can also store links on the Other Pictures/Attachments tab.

Always ensure that you have permission to save recipes in any recipe organizer software.  Different websites have different rules for this.

You are unlikely to ever reach the maximum number of recipes that you can enter in this recipe organizer, but it is probably safe to estimate that you can enter tens of thousands.  The Recipe System software is designed for you to enter your own recipes though and a typical collection is probably somewhere between 500 and 1000 recipes.

Check your browser’s settings for how it handles PDFs.  Your PDF may have been downloaded instead of displayed.

The Recipe System includes a detailed help structure that gives both an overview of the system as well as field-by-field details for the form that you are in.  You can access Recipe System Help using the ribbon at the top of every page.

If you have any problems with the system or with the installation of the software, send me a message using the Contact Me form and I’ll get back to you within 24 hours. Support hours are from 9-5 EST Monday to Friday.

Questions regarding how to use the system as well as feedback are always welcome.

Refunds will not be issued after the license key has been sent unless it can be verified that the recipe software cannot be installed on your Windows 10 PC.