Now You're Cooking! Tip - February 2001

February 2001

Quick Web Recipes

The easiest way to get a LOT of recipes off the internet into your NYC cookbooks is to use NYC’s Quick Web Recipes feature. This is a 2-step process that lets you conveniently download recipes, then unzip and import the downloaded recipe files into a new NYC cookbook. There is a bit of one-time setup you need to do in NYC before you can use this feature.

Setting Up the Quick Web Recipes Feature

To use Quick Web Recipes, you MUST have one of these zip utilities installed on your PC: WinZip 6+ or PKZip 2.5 (command line version). Both are 32-bit utilities for Windows 95 and up, both are compatible with long filenames, and both are available from our download site. You must install one of these on your PC. Then use NYC’s Tools… Options… External Applications… to identify your zip preference (WinZip or PKZip) and use the Path button to identify the path to your winzip32.exe file (for WinZip) or your pkzip25.exe file (for PKZip).

In like manner, you also must also identify your web browser to NYC using Tools… Options… External Applications… and the Web Browser… button. Identify the path to iexplore.exe (for Internet Explorer) or netscape.exe (for Netscape), or similar path to whatever your browser is named.

Using the Quick Web Recipes Feature

To use Quick Web Recipes:

1. Select File… Quick Web Recipes…

2. Click the STEP 1 link that says “NYC Online Recipe Library”.

3. When your browser opens on the NYC recipe page, select and download one of the zipped files on the page to your NYC \temp folder. You MUST direct the downloads to your \temp folder rather than to your default download folder so that NYC can find them after the download. To do this with Internet Explorer, right-click the file link and select “Save Target As…”, then use the file dialog to select NYC’s \temp folder (e.g., c:\Program Files\Nyc532\temp). To do this with Netscape, right-click the file link and select “Save Link As…”, then use the file dialog to select NYC’s \temp folder and press Save.

4. Repeat 3. for any other recipe files you want to download from the site.

5. After your downloading is complete, close your browser and press the STEP 2 button.

The STEP 2 button will create a new NYC cookbook named after the import file. If you downloaded more than one file, you will be prompted to select any or all of the files you downloaded for the import. Select all of the files (if you wish) and press Open. Each downloaded file will be unzipped and imported into its own cookbook. If NYC finds more than one text file in the .zip that you downloaded, you will be prompted to select the file to be imported.

Now that you have the recipes in NYC cookbooks, you can use the export feature (File… Export…) or the Move feature (Recipes… Recipes… window) to distribute them to other cookbooks as you see fit. Use File… Open Cookbook… to see all the cookbooks you have.

We suggest that you confine yourself at first to downloading files (94,000+ recipes) from our recipe library, which are all zipped MM format files and ready for the Quick Web Recipes feature; after you have some experience with the Quick Web Recipes feature, you can branch out into trying Quick Web Recipes to download files from other sites that are in MM, MC, NYC generic, or mixed formats. Our recipe library contains links to sites with over 0.5 million more recipes.

See previous NYC Tips

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