Frequently Asked Questions About
Now You're Cooking! 
Meal Planning Troubleshooting
Why is the Tag button disabled in the edit meal plan edit window?
This is because the default meal plan mode is “plan” rather than “tag”. If you click the “tag” radio button in the Mode frame, you can use the Tag button as you normally do, but you must click “plan” mode to return to meal planning.
I have created two menus ("menu1" & "menu2"), and I want both menus to be included on a single shopping list. My understanding is that this should occur automatically when I use the Append setting in the "When Saving Menu" radio group.
The Append functionality is only for appending to the same menu, not for merging two menus together. Append will put the newly saved menu stuff into the same file name (at the bottom of the file). To merge two shopping lists, open the first shopping list and use File... Merge Shopping List(s)... from the main menu when the shopping list window is open. This will let you select the second shopping list to be added to the open shopping list.
The Menu features don’t seem to be working. They are grayed out when I have a recipe open.
Close the recipe edit window and the recipe selection window, then the Menu features will be enabled. These windows cannot be open at the same time.
The Help file says I should use File…Open Menu… to open an existing menu, but I cannot find that option on my screen.
Press the M toolbar button to open the latest menu. Then you will be able to see the File… Open Menu… selection.
I renamed a cookbook, and now when I save a meal plan I get messages about the cookbook no longer exists. I have to answer Yes or No to the question “Complete Shopping List Anyway?” for each recipe in the meal plan that came from the renamed cookbook. What gives?
NYC internally stores the cookbook name with each recipe in a menu (this is so you can create meal plans with recipes from any cookbook). So then if you rename a cookbook, the recipes cannot be found because you changed the cookbook name and the old name that is stored with the menu entries is no longer valid. Thus, NYC gives you the message. For NYC 5.92 and higher, this is not an issue. This is because NYC 5.92 and higher auto-updates menu entries with the altered cookbook reference in all of these situations:
1. When you use File... Rename Cookbook… to rename a cookbook.
2. When you use Tools... Options... User Folder tab to move the User Folder location;
3. When you run File... Upgrade... to bring over/upgrade menus from a previous NYC installation.
If you are using an NYC version earlier than 5.92, menu entries are not auto-updated in the above situations, so you need to rebuild any menu that includes recipes from a renamed cookbook. NYC automatically builds the shopping list each time you save a menu, so as it encounters invalid cookbook names on each recipe in the menu, it is alerting you that the shopping list won't be correct. Just answer No to the question about Completing the Shopping List and you will be popped out of the loop.
When I save a menu, then use File... Open Menu... to open another one, save the second one, then Close, then open the second one again, the starting date has changed from what I saved to that of the first menu. Can this be fixed?
This behavior has been fixed in v5.16 and higher.
When I print a meal plan, or when I move between dates in a meal plan,
NYC gives me crazy dates, like 2347, etc. What is happening?
This behavior has been fixed in v5.16 and higher.
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Last Updated: 11/25/2022