Electronic Recipe Manager Updated with ERM 3.4 features For Your Information Technologies (FYIT) Jason McCombie, CEO/Founder Copyright 2000 (c) FYIT Electronic Recipe Manager The Electronic Recipe Manager is a state-of-the-art recipe management system. ERM has many features that make it one of the most functional recipe managers available. Users can add recipes with the click of a button using the superior parsing technology available in the storage bin utility, search throughout the database using an advanced search engine, maintain an electronic cabinet of on-hand items, create automatic shopping lists, resize recipes, and much, much more! Combine the expanded functionality with the simple interface and what you get is one of the most functional and user-friendly recipe managers available. Introduction When a user opens Electronic Recipe Manager, the Main Screen will appear, as seen in Figure 1. From the Main Screen, a user can choose to add recipes, search the existing database using the ERM search engine, maintain their cabinets or create menus, recipe groups and shopping lists. The first step is to choose the recipe type that the user wishes to work with. Figure 1: Main Screen Add New Recipes Clicking the Add button located on the Main Screen will cause the New Recipe screen to appear, allowing the entry of a new recipe, as seen in Figure 2. Figure 2: New Recipe Screen The data that can be entered for all recipe types is very similar, including Title, Category, Rating, Yield, Notes, Source, Cuisine/Origin, Prep Time, Cook Time, Ingredients and Directions. However, some of these fields do not need to be utilized when adding drink or other types of recipes (i.e., Yield, Prep Time, Cook Time). The only required field to enter a new recipe is the Title. Clicking on Reset under the "Ingredients" or "Directions" tabs will delete all currently added Ingredients or Directions and allow you to start from scratch. Clicking on the Re-Order arrows under the "Ingredients" or "Directions" tabs will allow you to move a selected Ingredient or Direction up or down in the list. After users enter an ingredient, the cabinet drop-down box may be populated with several choices that the ingredient may already be in the cabinet as. This works by gathering similar items already in the cabinet so users can choose what this item is most like. Users can scroll through all of the possible cabinet choices by using the arrow keys. If there is not a suitable choice in the drop-down box, users can type their own entry. However, this new entry will not appear in the cabinet until the user refreshes the cabinet through the menu option Tools -> Cabinet Tools -> Refresh Cabinet. Recipes can be marked private. This has absolutely no impact on any feature in ERM itself, but is necessary to protect any family secret recipes when using ERMster. Simply check off the Private checkbox and ERMster will not share this recipe with any users. The newest version of ERM also allows users to store complementary recipes (recipes that would go well with this one in a meal), an image of the prepared item, and the nutritional information. The complementary information is available on the Other Info tab of ERM while the nutritional information has its own tab. Figure 3: New Recipe - Other Information To add complementary recipes, click the Add button under the complementary window. This will bring up a search window to find any/all recipes you want to store as complementary. In the example, the frosting associated with a specific type of brownies is listed under the Brownie recipe. You can also remove recipes by highlighting them and clicking the associated Del button. Similarly, an image can be added/removed to the recipe using the Add/Del buttons. When adding an image to a recipe, the file dialog box appears so that the proper image can be found. Any *.jpg, *.gif, *.ico, *.cur, or *.bmp file should work. Figure 4: New Recipe - Nutritional Information The Amount or Portion of the Recipe field is used to store what amount of the recipe was used to determine the nutrient information on the right. There are several standard nutrients that are included in the list, but others can be added simply by using the text boxes and entering the nutrient they wish to store. Resize Recipe See Search Existing Recipes - Edit/Copy - Resize Recipe View/Print See Search Existing Recipes - View/Print Wipe Clean See Search Existing Recipes - Wipe Clean Clear The Clear button beside the Ingredients and Directions sections can be used to wipe out the current data for an ingredient or direction. Storage Bin Click on the Storage Bin button in the New Recipe screen to open the Storage Bin (located in top right corner), as seen in Figure 3. Simply copy the text from any e-mail or web site and paste it into the Storage Bin. Then highlight the block of text within the Storage Bin you wish to transfer. For example, to transfer the ingredients, highlight the group of ingredients and click the Ingredients button. As a result, all of the ingredients will automatically be transferred into the New Recipe screen. The same can be done with all other recipe sections such as Title, Yield, Directions, etc. Adding New Measurements to ERM Transfer Tool/Storage Bin If a specific ingredient measure does is not transferring correctly, the problem is more than likely that ERM does not know what the measurement is. ERM has a user maintainable list of drop-down choices that can be maintained for all measurements. For information on updating this list, please refer to Combo Box Maintenance. Once the base measurement, cup(s), for example, has been added; ERM will understand that it should parse the exact word, cup(s), as a measurement. As you know, all measurements have variations. Cup(s) can be cups, cup, c. etc. To let ERM know that these measurements should all be entered into ERM as cup(s), the conversion list must be maintained through the Conversion Maintenance menu option under the Admin menu. Automatic Parsing (Tagged Recipes) If the recipe sections are tagged appropriately, (for example, if each section of the recipe has an appropriate label such as the label "Ingredients" before the list of ingredients, "Directions" before the list of directions, etc.) it gets even easier. Users can simply click the All button and the entire recipe will be automatically transferred. However, it is a good idea to scan over the recipe before saving after using this technique to verify that ERM correctly transferred the recipe. Figure 5: Storage Bin Some recipes do not have these tags included, so there are shortcut keys to quickly add the tag for you. A Help screen is available for your convenience and is accessed by pressing the Escape button while in the active Storage Bin. It will pop up a window with a list of the available tags and the keystrokes necessary to insert them (for example, Ctrl+D will tag the Directions, Ctrl+N will tag the Notes), as seen in Figure 4. Figure 6: Storage Bin Help Each recipe source will have a specific format for all recipes they distribute or display. Once users learn the format of the recipe source and know which tags are needed for the ERM transfer utility to transfer properly, recipe entry will become second nature. When adding Ingredients or Directions (separately), ERM will prompt you with a screen asking if you wish to process the selected lines of text as multiple entries (if there are multiple lines). If you click 'Yes', ERM will interpret each line as a separate entry. If you click 'No', it will enter the entire block as one entry. However, if a user goes to the menu option Settings -> Options and checks off the Update Directions & Ingredients without asking to Insert box, it will disable this verification screen. ERM also has a new feature available in the settings on the Transfer Tab, Use ERM's Parser to combine single directions on multiple lines. This setting will attempt to locate logical breaks in a group of directions that have hard returns (hard returns commonly appear when copying/pasting from e-mails). It is a helpful aide, but nothing works better than simply deleting the hard returns manually in the storage bin before transferring the directions. Search Existing Recipes To search for an existing recipe in the database, click on the Search button located on the Main Screen. The Recipe Search window will appear, as seen in Figure 5, allowing a user to locate any recipe stored in the database based on any criteria entered. Figure 7: Recipe Search Search Users can search based on a combination of any of the fields shown. A user can also choose to search based on the cabinet by checking the Get only recipes with ingredients marked off in the Cabinet checkbox. When this option is selected, the search engine will only return recipes in which the user has all required ingredients checked off in their cabinet. This option can be used to suggest recipes that you may wish to prepare where all of the ingredients are available in your kitchen. When a search is completed, all criteria used in the search will become red. This is to show that this criteria was used to build the search criteria. When a recipe is clicked, ERM instantly displays details about the recipe. The entire recipe, including ingredients, directions and optionally the nutritional information appears in the Instant Preview Pane. The complementary recipes and the image also are loaded providing the ability to quickly see the details about a recipe before deciding to preview anything. By clicking Search within the currently listed recipes only (sub-search) checkbox, ERM will allow users to search within a search. Perhaps a user searches for all recipes with an ingredient of chicken, but then wants to search within those results for a recipe with garlic, too. Clicking on this checkbox will allow a user to narrow down a search as much as they want until they have exactly what they are looking for. When narrowing down the list, if a certain search narrows out all recipes in the previous results, there is a menu option to Undo Last Search. This will return the list to the results of the previous search. If you wish to e-mail a recipe, select the recipe you wish to send from the Search screen and go to the menu option E-mail Selected Recipe. When a list of recipes is displayed on the Search screen, the default order is in alphabetical order. If the user wants to display them in the order in which they were entered into the system, simply click the Recipe Title bar. The title bar acts as a toggle switch between the two recipe orders. The user can double-click on any recipe title to View/Print or Edit/Copy the recipe, depending on the user's preference in the Settings menu. View/Print is the default action, but ERM can be set up to automatically Edit/Copy the recipe when it is double-clicked. Hint: Users can perform advanced searches with this screen to find, for example, Main Courses - recipes with chicken in the title and with an ingredient of cheese, and where all of the ingredients are on hand using the cabinet by using the search criteria listed in Figure 5. View/Print Once a recipe search has populated the results window, a user can View/Print any recipe, as seen in Figure 6. The following screen is referred to as the Simple Print module. Users can View/Print multiple recipes using standard Windows selection techniques as described in the hint below. Figure 8: View/Print Recipe Hint: To select multiple recipes, highlight the first item wanted in the list while holding down the Shift key and then select the last item wanted. Users can also hold the Control key down and select random recipes. Scrolling Through Selected Recipes Click on the <<< and >>> buttons to scroll through selected recipes on the View/Print screen. Printing and Saving From the Simple Print module, users can choose to Print or Save the displayed text. If either Print All or Print Page is chosen, ERM will send the data to the default Windows printer. If the user chooses to Save, the document will be saved as the filename specified in the Settings menu. The file where the text is saved can be changed/specified from the menu option File -> Change Filename. Hint: If the user chooses a filename with an extension of .rtf, the Simple Print module will automatically save the document as a Rich Text document. This type of document retains all formatting and can be opened in many word processors. Alt Viewer From the Simple Print module, users can click on the Alt Viewer button which will transfer the text in the Simple Print module to the standard Rich Text editor, such as Microsoft Word (use .rtf filename extension), Notepad (use .txt filename extension) or word processors of the like. From these word processors you can format the recipes as you wish. For example, you could widen the left-hand margin to allow for inserting recipes into a binder. Edit/Copy Users can Edit/Copy any recipe by either selecting a recipe then clicking the Edit/Copy button or double-clicking the desired recipe when the Settings menu specifies to do so. The Edit/Copy screen will appear with all of the recipe data in the fields of the New Recipe screen, as seen in Figure 7. Figure 9: Edit/Copy Recipe Screen Resize Recipe Recipes can be resized easily by clicking the Resize Recipe button, as seen in Figure 8. The Resize Recipe screen enables users to resize recipes easily by selecting the fraction to multiply the existing recipe by. The New and Original amounts can be determined as a fraction (12/6) as well. 12/6 will double the recipe, 3/6 will cut the recipe in half, and 9/6 will resize the recipe to 11/2 times its original size. Users can also click Resize Recipe and save the recipe permanently with a different number of servings. This can be used to recalculate the measurements for large portions for a party or gathering or also to cut larger recipes in half for smaller families. There is an option to round fractions and decimals when resizing. What this will do is allow the users to specify if they want exact fractions or just to the closest 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, etc. It will also round any decimal numbers to 1/10, 1/100, or 1/1000 to keep any calculated amounts as easy to measure as possible or as accurate as possible. The choice to resize with exact accuracy in mind or easy measurement is up to each user. Figure 10: Resize Recipe Hint: Instead of using 12/6 in the New and Original amounts, users can select the Fraction option and specify to double the recipe by entering 2 for the Numerator and 1 for the Denominator of the fraction. This will result in resizing the recipe by 2/1 or doubling it. View/Print See Search Existing Recipes - View/Print Duplicate Recipe Once an existing recipe is loaded into the New Recipe screen, users can duplicate a recipe by simply clicking the Duplicate button. This will save a new recipe in the database with the current data displayed in the screen without affecting the current recipe. If the user changes the Title before they click Duplicate, the recipe will be saved in the database with the new title, leaving the previous copy of the recipe as is. Users can duplicate recipes to eliminate the need to enter two or more similar recipes. Wipe Clean For any reason, if the user wishes to clear all fields on the New Recipe screen, the Wipe Clean button can be used. This will wipe out all data currently in the screen and allow a user to start over. Delete Users can select one or many recipes for deletion from the database as well. It must be understood that this will remove the recipes from the database permanently. Each recipe chosen for deletion will prompt the user for confirmation. Recipes will only be deleted if the users clicks Yes to the confirmation message. Cabinet Maintenance To do cabinet maintenance, click the Cabinet button located on the Main Screen, as seen in Figure 10. The Cabinet screen allows a user to maintain their food, drink and other recipe cabinets for easier recipe searching. A proper cabinet specifies whether the user has an item on hand (by checking off the checkbox), the usual purchase amount and the average price for the amount the user usually buys. The cabinet consists of all ingredients used in all recipes in the existing recipe database. There is a checkbox beside each ingredient in the cabinet. Checking off ingredients shows availability of that item. There are separate cabinets for food and drink and other recipes, but updates for items update data across all cabinets. Note: If a user checks off 'water' in the food cabinet, it will also check water in the drink and other cabinets showing that water is now an item on hand. Figure 11: Cabinet Screen Cabinets affect the search results as well as what is returned for the shopping lists in the Menu areas of ERM. The Store Info fields of the cabinet also allow the user to enter the amount, price, aisle and any type of group for each item that they commonly purchase. When prices are entered into ERM, the Itemized Shopping List can be used to estimate the overall cost of the entire shopping list. Note: The aisle and group fields can be used to order the shopping list, making shopping a snap because you can order the shopping list to the way your specific grocery store is set up! When searching in ERM, if the Get only recipes with ingredients marked off in the Cabinet checkbox is selected, the ERM search engine will only return recipes in which all ingredients used are checked off in the respective cabinet (food recipes use the food cabinet, drink recipes use the drink cabinet, etc.). Users should update the cabinet with their information when they first start using ERM if they plan on using this feature (or the Cost Estimation). In the New Recipe screen, the In the cabinet as... selection box is populated with possible choices after the user tabs out of the ingredient text area. This is done to give users several choices of possible existing cabinet names for the listed ingredient. If there is an exact match, the item will automatically appear in the In the cabinet as... box allowing the user to simply press Enter and move on. It is recommended that users look through these choices if there is not an exact match automatically displayed. Note: Keeping the cabinet compact will make cabinet maintenance easier and the Itemized Shopping List more accurate. The software will search through the cabinet to find the most likely match of any ingredient listed. Check All and Check None The buttons Check All and Check None are used to help make the cabinet maintenance easier. Check All will check all items in the cabinet. Check None will remove the checks from all ingredients. Find Click on the Find button to search for any ingredient or partial ingredient. Clicking on the Exact Match checkbox will find the exact ingredient you are searching for in order to update (rename) or delete it. Add Item If an item is not in the cabinet, but a user wishes to add this item, the Add Item button can be used. This is not recommended, because the menu option Cabinet Tools -> Refresh Cabinet will automatically find and insert new cabinet items into the cabinet. Update Item Users may change cabinet items by clicking on the item and then clicking on the Update Item button. This can be used if you wish to change the item 'clove of garlic' to 'garlic', for example. This actually was created to allow users to merge two ingredients that are actually the same, but have two separate listings in the cabinet, like 'chicken breast' and 'chicken breasts'. Users could rename all occurrences of one to the other with one simple procedure. When updating any cabinet item, a confirmation message appears to allow the user to confirm what will happen before ERM proceeds. Figure 12: Update Confirmation Delete Item If an item is in the cabinet, but the recipe that includes this item has been deleted from the database, users can click the Delete Item button to force the removal of the entry from the database manually. This is not recommended, because the menu option Cabinet Tools -> Clean Cabinet is used to automatically look for any items that are not used in recipes and delete them. Print Click on the Print button to print a list of everything in the selected cabinet. Save Click on Save before exiting this screen to save any changes made. Menus, Recipe Groups and Shopping Lists To create menus for planning meals or to create recipe groups, click on the Menu button located on the Main Screen, as seen in Figure 11. When the Menu screen appears, users can group recipes in categories or make menus for certain periods of time (days, weeks, etc.). These recipe groups/menus can then be printed as cookbooks or used to get an Itemized Shopping List. Figure 13: Menus and Recipe Groups Menu and Recipe Group Levels The creation of menus and recipe groups is very customizable. Users can add recipes at any level. Several examples are shown. The first two, My Favorite Party Drinks and Christmas Meal, are recipe groups with the recipes added immediately below this level. The third type of recipe group, Healthy Week, is a whole weeks worth of recipes that are all healthy. It breaks down into specific days and even daily time periods (Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner). Recipes can also been added directly to the dates shown and even to other recipes. This is not recommended for more than one recipe deep. For example, if a recipe for Chocolate Cake calls for Chocolate Icing, the icing can be placed under the cake to show a dependency. Note: The steps are a guide, but not a requirement. Recipes can be added at any level, including on other recipes. However, there is a limit to how many levels an entry can go (about 8 deep). View/Print See Search Existing Recipes - View/Print Itemized Shopping List Users can also select any entry in the menu area from which to create an Itemized Shopping List, as seen in Figure 12. ERM will then find all ingredients needed in the recipes under the selected entry or entries. From that list of ingredients, ERM will sum total amounts needed for all recipes, mark entries that are not checked off in the cabinet and list price information. The Buy column is intended to allow users to change the quantity of an item that they would like to buy. ERM will also automatically put 0's in the Buy column for any item you already have (noted by being checked off in the cabinet), and 1's in it for items you need to buy. The sub-price and total are automatically re-calculated when users update the Itemized Shopping List. Figure 14: Itemized Shopping List Buy Everything Clicking the Buy Everything button will change all 0's to 1's in the Buy column, indicating that all items need to be purchased. You can also manually change this number to 2, 3, etc. if you wish to purchase more than just 1 of the item. Print w/Prices When users select the Print w/Prices button, ERM will make a list of the price information in a readable format, as seen in Figure 13. This information will be loaded into the Simple Print module where users can save or print the list. Figure 15: Itemized Shopping List /w Prices Print w/Needed Amt. When users select the Print w/Needed Amt. button, ERM will take the amount information for the ingredients and make a list that can be taken directly to the store so you know about how much of each item you will need to make all of the recipes in your recipe group. The final results are loaded into the Simple Print module and include each distinct cabinet ingredient and the amount necessary for all recipes. If the ingredient is not checked off in the cabinet, the amount needed of this item will be displayed as bold, italic, red text followed by an asterisk (*) to denote that the user is completely out of this item. This results in an Itemized Shopping List, as seen in Figure 14. Figure 16: Itemized Shopping List w/Needed Amounts Delete Entry If a user selects Delete Entry, ERM will prompt the user to confirm the removal of the menu or recipe group (or sub entries, if they exist). If the entry has no sub entries, the system will prompt the user to remove the item itself. If the item has sub entries, as a recipe group would, the system will prompt the user to delete the sub nodes. Users cannot delete an entry unless all sub entries are removed first. Removal of any entry will prompt the user with which other entries will be affected as well. Tools Menu Web Recipe Search The Internet Recipe Finder for ERM, seen in Figure 20, allows users to search through various recipe websites in search of any particular recipe by using key words. Once the user finds the recipe they wish to keep, it can automatically be transferred into the database via the Storage Bin. An internet connection is required to utilize this option. Figure 17 - ERM Recipe Finder Launch ERMster Launches ERMster, FYIT's Napster-like search engine for recipes. ERMster is freeware. Find out more information about ERMster at www.foryourinfotech.com. Cookbook Report With the ability to add separate cookbooks in ERM came the need to see which cookbooks were populated. ERM now can produce a cookbook report to show how many of each food, drink, and other recipes exist in any of the existing cookbooks. Any recipes with an UNKNOWN COOKBOOK ID will not show up in ERM until that exact COOKBOOK ID exists in your More_Cookbooks section of the Combo Box Maintenance! Some common ways an UNKNOWN COOKBOOK ID can occur might be if you restore from a previous backup or overwrite the current ERM database with a backup copy manually. This means that the ERM settings file and the ERM database are not in sync. This is easily rectified by simply adding any cookbook ID's that show up in the cookbook report. Figure 18: ERM Cookbook Report Ad-Hoc Querying Tool The ERM Ad-Hoc Querying tool is used to generate lists of recipes that meet certain criteria. These lists are commonly used to have a quick printout of the recipes that are included in the database. There is tremendous freedom in the way these reports look and what data they include. For this reason, the querying tool is also a bit tricky to learn. There is an example query that is included and can be loaded if you need help. This query will show users how to set up a simple query and also execute it so the results can be seen. Remove Duplicate Recipes This allows users to remove or rename duplicate recipes that may exist in the database. The search will return all recipes in all categories (Food, Drink and Other) with identical titles, as seen in Figure 16. From here, a user can view each recipe to determine its uniqueness and see if they are different recipes. Perhaps the recipes are different variations of the same recipe, and a user would like to keep both recipes but rename one of them to make them easier to differentiate. If so, simply click on of the duplicates, go to Edit/Copy and rename. If they are exact duplicates, a user may want to delete one of the copies of the recipe. If so, click on the recipe wished to be deleted and click on Delete. Figure 19: Remove Duplicate Recipes Find Uncategorized Recipes Similarly, the Find Uncategorized Recipes will search the database for any recipes that do not have a specified category and present a list to the user for changes. Transfer Files Reset The Reset function will delete the current transfer file which is the file specified in the Settings menu for the transfer file. View The View function will allow users to view a transfer file before importing or after exporting a list of recipes. This is done to verify that the correct recipes are imported/exported. Import The Import function will import the current transfer file which is the file specified in the Settings menu for the transfer file. Importing means that all recipes in the transfer file will be entered in the database automatically. The filename that appears as the default for importing is the file that is specified in the settings for this purpose. Users can browse to and select any other ERM import file that they wish. Export When a user chooses to Export files, The filename that appears as the default for exporting is the file that is specified in the settings for this purpose. It can be changed to any other valid filename. Once the file is selected, the next step is to select the group of recipes they wish to export, as seen in Figure 17. This is done through the standard ERM search screen and users can choose any number of recipes to export that they wish. The more the recipes, the more time it will take to export them and create the ERM Export file (and also to import them later). It used to be a recommendation not to export more than 50 recipes at a time, but with the latest transfer tools, exporting thousands of recipes still only takes a couple minutes! Figure 20: Export Recipes - Search Once the desired recipes are highlighted, users will click the Select button to complete the export process. The files will then be exported to the transfer file entered by the user. Cabinet Tools There are four menu tools designed to help maintain the cabinet. They will repair, refresh, and clean the database using some standard 'cabinet rules'. Combine Ingredients This tool prepares a list of similar ingredients that can be combined, as seen in Figure 18. Users can click on the boxes on the left to show which updates they actually want to make. The Figure 17 illustrates an example screen whereby 'cayenne' will be changed to 'cayenne pepper' because there is no need to have two of the same ingredients in the cabinet. Users will not want to change all of the ingredients that are returned using this utility. This utility helps keep the cabinet as compact as possible. There is a button to Swap Columns and Select that will swap the item in the Cabinet From with the item in the Change To and select the column. This is used if there is a need to update the opposite of what ERM finds as a possible change. Figure 21: Combine Ingredients Repair When a user accesses the tool to repair the database, ERM will attempt to place every ingredient under its most likely cabinet name. All changes are confirmed before they are made to the cabinet because this process is not perfect. Not all changes should be made. The user should use their own judgment when accepting these changes. Refresh Refreshing the cabinet will make sure that all ingredients used in recipes are available in your cabinet. Clean Cleaning the cabinet will attempt to remove any ingredients from the cabinet that are not specified as ingredients in the collection of recipes you have in the database. All deletions must be confirmed by the user. Admin Area Registration Allows shareware users to find out why they should register ERM, get their own, personal registration code on-line, and actually register the software. Settings The Settings menu has several features that can be turned on/off based on user preference, as seen in Figure 19. Figure 22: ERM Settings - Look/Feel Tab File Settings The first is the Filename Used to Save the Previewed Text in the Simple Print module. This file will be saved as text (*.txt) if it has any other extension than *.rtf, in which case, it will be saved in Rich Text Format. The Filename used for Recipe Transfers is used to store the extracted text file of exported recipes. This file can be e-mailed to other users of ERM and imported into their database through the Import utility. There is also a feature to update this setting each time ERM exports or imports from a different source. The Path to the Database is used to store the path to the ERM database. This needs to be accurate because DB backups and restores are based on the DB location. The Alternate Backup Copy of the DB allows users to keep an alternate copy of the database for extra security. This alternate location is usually in a different directory, on a different drive, or even on a different computer (the drive must be mapped). Misc. Settings The e-mail settings are important for configuring SMTP. Users must have an account on a server that provides SMTP relay. Any ISP that provides e-mail accounts will normally give users this type of access, but that is something handled by the individual ISP's. The username and password will most likely be the same username and password that you use to log on to your ISP. The Host IP address would probably be something like mail.hostname.com. The From E-Mail address should be your e-mail address and the From Name can be anything you want. The Default To setting will allow users to specify an e-mail address (or group of e-mail addresses) that they normally send recipes to. All E-mail addresses should be separated with commas. Print Settings The Base Font Size is the standard font size used for the regular/standard text in the Simple Print module. All text is relatively sized based on this number. When Start each recipe on its own page is selected, the system will force a page break after each recipe. This will cause the recipes to be viewed and printed on separate pages. Print a blank line between each recipe direction will simply space out each recipe to a less compact format. When selected, Print the Table of Contents and number the recipe to match will do as stated and print the recipes in a cookbook-style format. This format will have a table of contents and list the recipes in order with a recipe number beside the title. Each recipe will also have their respective recipe numbers printed with their title to make them easy to find. The setting to View the directions as a paragraph, not steps will do exactly what it says. Instead of viewing the directions in a Step 1, Step 2 format, they are viewed as a paragraph. Users can also now Include the Nutritional Information on the recipe preview at their discretion. Options Smart Seek Technology can be turned on/off at the user's request. Smart Seek Technology is used in the combo boxes to allow the user to type a single character and have the matches automatically appear. The combo box will allow users to scroll through all entries that match the character that the user types. If no match is found, the combo box then allows the user to type his or her own entry. Smart Seek Technology is optionally available on the Amount drop down because most of the amounts are going to have similar first characters. This might make it more cumbersome to actually have to scroll through the options by pressing 1 several times. The Update Directions and Ingredients option can be turned on or off depending on whether a user wants a message box to appear every time a direction or ingredient is being inserted into the recipe. As a standard, when a user tries to add a direction or ingredient in place of another direction or ingredient, a message box will appear asking if a user wants to overwrite or insert the new ingredient or direction. Checking the box will automatically overwrite the ingredient or direction. The Limit Search option is available to allow users to search for recipes entered after installation. When this option is checked, no recipes that were distributed with the software will be returned. The results of the search will only include recipes entered after the user installed the program. Automatically incrementing the date by 1 will cause the date to change by one day every time a user clicks the date button on the Menu/Recipe Group screen. The current day will be added to the current recipe group and then will increment by 1. Advanced users can Suppress generic/help messages by checking off the appropriate setting. This will cause ERM to not display all of the messages that are designed as more of a tutorial for beginners. As ERM grows, this will be more and more necessary for advanced users. Users can also select to automatically be prompted to save the database on Exit. This will cause ERM to ask if you want to backup the ERM database each time you run the software. If you constantly worry about losing your work or your computer crashes frequently, this is a good idea. Transfer There are several user maintainable settings in the Transfer area that will allow users to set ERM up to parse recipes from their favorite source. If recipe sections (ingredients, directions) are not labeled, ERM can be told which recipe section to look for the specific data. A section is determined by two or more consecutive returns. Ingredients almost always are followed by directions, so these two settings will usually not be more than 1 number apart. Users can select to Use ERM's Parser to combine single directions on multiple lines. This is needed because some e-mail lists send recipes out that have returns in the middle of sentences. This feature will cause ERM to ignore those hard returns and translate the entire set of directions into separate directions. It uses the periods and spacing to determine if a direction should actually be split or not. Note: The direction combining option is especially useful when transferring recipes from the popular DOS recipe program, Meal-Master. Having this option selected allows users to import Meal-Master recipes easily. ERM's Recipe Parser can also be set up to look for directions based on a specific set of criteria such as a number followed by a symbol and then the direction followed by 2 returns. This can be used with any recipe copied from ERM because ERM always displays recipes as '1: direction text' and then a break. The New Recipe Signal can be used to attempt to import multiple recipes at a time. This is NEVER recommended, but it is supported. Commonly, users have an export file from another recipe program that they want to import into ERM. Sometimes, ERM can be set up to import multiple recipes without any errors, but it is not straight forward and requires much trial and error to get the settings just right. Look/Feel Click on Automatically Maximize Forms When Possible to automatically adjust most of ERM's display screens to the size of your screen when they are loaded. Click on Automatically Go To the Search Screen on Startup if you wish ERM to default to the Search screen (instead of the Main screen) whenever ERM is launched. Click on Automatically Display a List of All Recipes on Search Screen if you wish ERM to search the entire database for all recipes as soon as ERM is launched. Click on Add 'All' to the Recipe Types Available with ERM to add a recipe type of "All", along with "Food", "Drink", or "Other". Note: This can be used to create one export file of an entire cookbook (food, drink, and other recipes), rather than having to create a separate export file for each type of recipe in each cookbook. The default action that takes place when a user double clicks a recipe title on the search screen can be set to either View/Print the recipe or Edit/Copy the recipe. Users can set up ERM to Automatically close a recipe after a save. This is very helpful if many recipes are being edited at the same time because saving the recipe will also close the recipe and bring them back to the search screen to load/edit another. Users can optionally specify if they want to include the nutritional information in the Instant Preview pane on the search screen. Multiple Cookbooks ERM has the ability to add multiple cookbooks at the discretion of the user. Ideas for separate cookbooks could be to have a Favorites cookbook to move recipes you've tried and loved, a Healthy cookbook for recipes that are more health conscious than others, and even separate cookbooks for separate people who use the software. The cookbooks can be added and removed through the standard Combo Box Maintenance area as described in the next section. When the cookbooks have been added, the will show up in the Cookbook Selection dropdown and allow users to specify the new cookbook. Figure 23: Cookbook Selection Screen Before a cookbook can be removed, ERM first checks to make sure that there are no existing recipes in the cookbook. If there are, all recipes must be either removed or moved to another cookbook before proceeding. After a cookbook is empty ERM will allow a users to remove that cookbook from the database as long as it is not selected as the current cookbook. Moving recipes between cookbooks To move a recipe from one cookbook to another, first do a search and find the recipe. Once the recipe has been found, right-click on the recipe to get the recipe popup menu. There will be an option to move the recipe. Figure 24: Move Selected Recipe(s) Note: You can move more than one recipe at a time by using the standard windows rules for multi-selection of data within a dropdown list box. If you hold down control, you will be able to select any sporadic recipes and move them all. Similarly, if you hold down shift, you can select a range of recipes to move. Combo Box Maintenance Each drop-down combo box list available in the software can be maintained through the Combo Box Maintenance menu option. Users have the ability to add, update and delete items. It is not recommended that users attempt to update this area of the software without a good understanding of what effects their changes will have on the system. Figure 21 shows an example of the 'Category_Food' maintenance box. Entering '12' in the Order and 'Casseroles' in the Display Value would add a category with this name. From this point on, when entering recipes, Casseroles would show up in the Category drop-down combo box. By clicking on an existing preset such as '08=Desserts', a user could rename what will appear in the combo-box instead of Desserts. Perhaps a user would like to called it 'Miscellaneous Desserts' instead or rename it altogether by changing the Display Value to 'Seafood'. With that stated, users can add items freely and they will be available in the drop-down lists for entry into recipes. Figure 25: Combo Box Maintenance Conversion Maintenance (Measurements) Abbreviations for measurements used in recipes are maintained through the Conversion Maintenance menu option. Some recipes will use different abbreviations for measurements. For example, some recipes may use "T", "Tbsp" or "Tbsps" as an abbreviation for "Tablespoon". By including all variations in the Conversion Maintenance, it assures that the import/transfer tool will recognize the variation as the correct measurement. Figure 22 shows how all recipes with the measurement variations listed will automatically be changed to "Tbsp." in all imported/transferred recipes. Variations can be added as needed. Note These additions will not appear in the drop-down combo box for measurements unless added through the Combo Box Maintenance utility. Figure 26: Conversion Maintenance Reset Ratings The menu option Reset Ratings will simply reset all ratings in the database back to their original value, which is nothing. From there, users can re-rank the recipes to their own specification. Database In one of the more recent upgrades to ERM, the ability to backup and restore the database has been added. Once the users start entering recipes, it is likely that they will want to keep a backup copy of the database around, just in case. ERM provides functions to make a backup copy of the database and also restore the database from this backup. If there is already a backup copy of the database existing when a user tries to back up the database, the system will prompt whether or not to overwrite the current backup database. There is no need for more then one backup copy of the database; therefore, users will likely just overwrite the old backup each time. ERM will create a backup file and then continue functioning normally. If a user accidentally deletes a recipe that they would like back or if for some reason ERM cannot connect to the database, they may want to restore the database back to the last backed-up copy. ERM should be able to function normally after this procedure, but if there are problems reconnecting to the database, users may have to exit and re-enter ERM to reestablish a database connection. Users can now also create an Alternate Backup copy of the database easily at any location they choose. This can be done to give a user added comfort that they have a backup of their recipe collection. Recipes Menu Share Recipes with Other Users This option will launch FYIT's ERM Share Recipes web page. On this page ERM users can import recipes from other users or export their own recipes to share with others. Edit Website Links This option allows users to edit a maintainable list of recipe websites that will show up in the Recipes Menu of ERM. The list of recipes is simply a text file that contains a list of websites separated by a return. Clicking on one of these links will conveniently launch the corresponding web site. Uninstalling ERM There is un-install information about ERM available in the Help menu of ERM. 34