Now You're Cooking! Tip - February 2007

February 2007

Publishing NYC Cookbooks

Using Microsoft Word

You must have Word 10 or higher installed on your PC to publish cookbooks in Word. If you don’t have Word 10 or higher, see the section below on use of other word-processor software.

You should first attempt to publish a small cookbook (<50 recipes) to get a sense for how long it takes. Be prepared to wait for several minutes or longer when publishing large cookbooks (>1000 recipes). Realize that if your “fast” PC publishes about 5 recipes per second, it will take 1000 seconds (~17 minutes) to publish 5000 recipes.

To publish a cookbook:

1. Select File… Publish Cookbook…

2. Select a cookbook to publish, and press OK (or simply dbl-click a cookbook).

3. In the Publish Cookbook window, select a Word template to format the cookbook. You can choose letter (full page portrait) or half-page portrait or half-page landscape.

4. To stop the publishing in mid-cookbook, use the Interrupt button on the status bar window. This will safely shut down Word automation. DO NOT break the program or shut it down in any other way during publishing, or you may leave instances of Word running in memory, eventually forcing a reboot to clear system resources.

5. Press the Publish button.

NYC will then open Word and publish your recipes by category. NYC published cookbooks start with a cookbook title page, followed by a Table of Contents that includes categories and recipes within categories. Categories will be published as chapters in alphabetical order, and recipes within each category will be published one per page in alphabetical order within the category. An alphabetized index containing both recipe and category names will be included at the end of the cookbook. NYC will then prompt you to see if you want to open the published cookbook in Word.

NYC captures font styles from your selected Word template. Styles are specified in the template for the cookbook name, category, recipe title, ingredients, and directions. NYC positions the cookbook name, Table of Contents, recipes, and index according to bookmarks in the template. Ingredients and recipe image are positioned using a 2-column table that displays in Word but not in the printed document.

NYC publishes the recipes one per page in the cookbook. Uncategorized recipes will be omitted from the published cookbook, as will empty categories (categories with no recipes assigned to them). Recipes assigned to more than one category will only appear in the first category (i.e., the one nearer the top of the alphabet). For example, if you have several recipes assigned to “desserts” and “fruits”, they will appear in the Desserts chapter in the published cookbook. This may leave no recipes assigned to “fruits”, in which case this category would be omitted from the published cookbook.

Modifying the Published Cookbook (*.doc)

When you open the published cookbook in Word, you can use Word to touch up the cookbook, or reformat the styles. There is no harm in attempting this, because if you damage the Word document, you can easily get it back using NYC’s File… Publish Cookbook…

Once you have the Word document the way you want it, you can print it or save it as a PDF file for a commercial printer.

Modifying the Word Templates (*.dot)

If you are skilled with Word, you can change the basic formatting of published cookbooks by creating alternate templates starting with copies of the templates provided (CB*.dot files in your NYC user folder). Your alternate template filename must start with “CB.” and end with “.dot”, with intermediate characters you provide (e.g., “CB.mytemplate.dot”). You should not attempt using alternate templates unless you are proficient with Word, because you can easily damage the templates such that they are unusable by NYC, forcing a reinstall of NYC to get them back. Create copies of the CB*.dot files with File Explorer. DO NOT make copies by opening the templates in Word and doing File… Save As… as this can damage the templates.

Troubleshooting Published Cookbooks

The most common problem occurs if a user does not have Word 10 or higher installed, in which case NYC gives an error message when it tries to open Word.

If you get “Error 429 ActiveX component can't create object trying to open Word document”, this suggests a problem with MS Word automation on your PC. One user reported he fixed the problem by running Detect and Repair from the Help menu in Word, which reported that the “Office Source” engine was disabled. To fix this, he right-clicked on My Computer… Manage… Services and Applications… Services… Office Source Engine and turned the service back on. Then he ran Detect and Repair again, after which NYC could successfully activate Word for publishing.

Some users find that the File… Publish… launches and seems to work, but a Table of Contents is omitted and/or the “Table of Contents” header appears in the wrong place. The reason for this is currently unknown, but it seems to happen only to certain users with non-English settings in Windows and in Word. Check the NYC FAQ for latest details on Troubleshooting External Applications.

If errors occur during publishing that force abnormal shutdown of NYC, please note that NYC may leave multiple instances of Word running in memory on your computer. These instances can accumulate during repeated errors and if you don’t correct it, you will eventually need to reboot due to limited resources. To shut down unwanted instances of Word, first close NYC and Word and all associated windows. Then press Cntl-Alt-Delete. Select the Processes tab and remove any copies of "WINWORD.EXE" (select it and press End Process button).

Using WordPerfect, OpenOffice, or Other Word-Processor

For those using word processing programs other than Word, the best option is to export recipes to a text file using with “no line breaks”.

Use File… Export Recipes… to a generic text file and check the box “no line breaks”. This format allows your word processor to extend text to the margins and word-wrap to the next line properly. You can then manually add images and format the document however you like with your word processor. NYC will export recipes in alphabetical order, and you would need to group them by category using the word-processor.

For a cookbook, you can also “print to file” a specific cookbook with NYC. Use File… Print… cookbook... select “print to file”. However, the result will be a text file with line breaks, which would need to be removed for word-wrap to work in your word processor.

NYC can also “print to file” any of NYC reports. For a TOC, you can use NYC’s output of recipe names by category (see File… Print… categories… (say yes to “include recipe names”).

Given the relative effort involved in these non-Word options, you may want to purchase and install Word 10 or higher so you can use File… Publish Cookbook…

For information on publishing your recipes to the web, see this User Tip: Jan 2007

See previous NYC Tips

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