A helpful user sent this information on how to get recipes you have in a word document on your computer into your My Recipe Book App.  Here is his explanation of how he does it.  Thanks for sharing Ed.

A number of people have asked if there is a way to import recipes from Word into My Recipe Book.  It turns out that it is actually quite straightforward to do this by using a few simple tricks.  Note that this method works for one recipe at a time, just like importing a recipe from an online website, and assumes that your recipes are on a Mac or Windows PC.  Here is how to do this.

1.       You will need to start by installing a free application called Dropbox (www.dropbox.com) on your iPad and your Windows PC or Mac.  Dropbox allows you to easily share files between different devices by just dragging them into a special folder called “Dropbox” on your Windows PC or Mac and instantly see these same files on your iPad (or iPhone).  If the total size of all your shared recipe files is less than 2GB, Dropbox is free.

2.       Once you have Dropbox installed in your Mac or Windows PC, drag all of your recipe Word documents to the Dropbox folder.  Dropbox supports both DOC and DOCX file formats.

3.       Start Dropbox on your iPad.  You should immediately see all of your recipe files.  If you select a recipe, Dropbox will display the recipe in essentially the same format is your original Word document.  Select the recipe you want to import into My Recipe Book.

4.       Next, press the Home button and start My Recipe Book on the iPad.

5.       You are actually going to use the Custom Import feature to transfer the recipe into the App so start by selecting “Find Recipes Online” button.  Once the Find Recipes screen is displayed, click the Custom Import button on the top of the screen.  Note that you don’t actually have to select an online website to do this.  This will bring up a blank ingredient list and a blank directions box as well as having additional fields to enter the recipe name, prep time, etc., just as if you were doing a normal custom import from an online website.

6.       Switch back to Dropbox.  The easiest way to do this is to use the multi-touch sideways swipe.  You may have to figure out whether to swipe left or right the first time but this is a very easy way to switch between open applications on the iPad, in this case Dropbox and My Recipe Book.

7.       Once you are in Dropbox, touch and hold the top left of your list of ingredients until you see the blue dots.  Adjust the dots until all of your ingredients are highlighted and you will see a Copy button.  Touch the Copy button to copy the list of ingredients.

8.       Use the multi-touch sideways swipe in the other direction to return to My Recipe Book.  Touch and hold the Ingredients box until you see a Paste button.  Touch Paste and your list of ingredients will appear in the Ingredients box.

9.       Return to Dropbox as before but this time select and copy the directions from your Word recipe.  Return to My Recipe Book and paste in the directions.

10.   Either retype the recipe title into My Recipe Book or use the same method to copy the recipe title from Dropbox to My Recipe App.

11.   When you are done, fill in any additional information such as servings or prep time, do any required minor editing and reformatting and then save the recipe normally.

12.   Repeat steps 5 through 11 for the rest of your Word formatted recipes.

One of the biggest changes we made in the last update was to add the Custom Importer, and there have been a lot of questions about how it all works.  There is a video for how to use the Custom Importer in the Video Tutorials section of the settings screen, and written instructions are below.

First, Easy Import is still available for all the sites that were available before.  We did not change how Easy Import works, we just changed how it looks a little bit.

The bar at the top of the screen when you are in the “Find Recipes Online” screen now has two purposes.  If you would like to search for blueberry recipes at epicurious.com, touch the “Sites” button, select epicurious.com, then type in blueberries into the search bar.  The recipes will come up.  Navigate to the recipe you’re looking for, and touch the “Easy Import” button, and the recipe will be imported to your recipe book, just as it always has

The second purpose of the bar at the top of the screen is to navigate to any website, allowing you to import from anywhere on the web.  If you want to import the latest recipe from Smitten Kitchen, type www.smittenkitchen.com into the navigation bar.  The website will open up.  Navigate to the recipe you want to import, and touch the “Custom” button at the top.  Half the screen will open up, revealing the Custom Import information.

To use the Custom Importer:

1. Locate the list of ingredients on the website in the lower half of the window, and touch the words until the blue highlights show up. Move the 4 dots around until all of the ingredients are highlighted in the selection, then touch the “Ingredients” button in the pop-up. The ingredients will now go into the ingredients section of the custom importer.
2. Follow the same procedure with the directions and title. If the ingredients or directions are broken into multiple sections, just keep highlighting them and touching the “ingredients” or “Directions” buttons, and it will keep adding the text to the appropriate section. If you add something by mistake, you can tap in the text block and delete the section you imported by mistake.
3. Fill in the remaining information about servings, cook, and prep time while you’re looking at the recipe, then find the photo you want to import.
4. Touch the photo until the “Save Image” button comes up, touch that and it will add the URL location to the Img URL blank. When you’re finished filling everything in, touch the “Save” button in the middle of the screen, and it will import the recipe. You can make any additional changes and add categories from there.
5. Touch the Blue “Save” button in the middle of the screen – not the Easy Import Button, and your recipe will be saved to the My Recipe Book App.

I’ve gotten a lot of questions lately about how to back-up and restore recipes.  First and foremost, if you do not run the back-up procedure and save the back-up files to your computer, if you have an issue with your iPad, and you have to run a restore you will lose all of your recipes.  So, it is very important to back-up your files regularly.

For those who upgraded to the iPad 2 – congrats!  You can use the same back-up and restore procedures outlined below to save the files from your old iPad and restore them to your new iPad 2.

• How can I back-up my data?

1. Touch the settings icon in the upper left corner
2. Touch the Backup/Restore button
3. Touch the Run Backup Mode button
4. Connect your device to your computer, and allow iTunes to sync and back-up your data
5. With the device still connected, make sure the name of your device is selected in the left column
6. Across the top of the right side of the iTunes window, summary is usually selected, with a summary of your iPad. Select the “Apps” button instead.
7. Scroll to the bottom, and you will see the File Sharing Section
8. Click on Recipe Book, and you will see several files under RecipeBook Documents
9. Highlight the folder called BACKUPFOLDER, it should have today’s date on it, if you ran backup mode today
10. In the bottom right, click the Save To button
11. Navigate to the location on your computer that you would like to save your back-up and click Choose
12. The folder will save to the selected drive on your computer
13. If you open the folder, you will notice image files as well as a database file called RecipeBook.sqlite – this is the backed up database of your recipes, and you will not be able to open the file and check it, or read it on your computer since it is a database file. This is the file that will restore your recipes if anything happens to your device

How do I restore my files if something has happened to my device?

1. Touch the settings icon in the upper left corner
2. Touch the Backup/Restore button
3. Touch the Run Restore Mode button
4. Close the app
5. Connect your device to the computer
6. Find the File Sharing section in iTunes that you used to create the back-up
7. Highlight Recipe Book
8. Click the Add button
9. Select all the files within the BACKUPFOLDER on your hard drive, if it asks you to overwrite the files in there, click yes
10. Start the My Recipe Book app
11. The app will take a few minutes to run the import, be patient and don’t close out of the app or the restore won’t complete
12. The app will open normally after that, and the recipes from your back-up will be there

We fixed the bug with the grocery list causing the app to crash with certain imported recipes, but despite testing we seem to have introduced a new bug.  This is causing previously entered recipes and the recipe book selections that came with the app to not populate ingredients in the grocery list.  We are SO sorry – and know that the grocery list feature is one that you guys really use a lot.  We are working on a bug fix, and will get it out as soon as possible.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the new email import feature.  You can only import recipes from your friends and family that send it to you from their Recipe Book app, not just any recipe you have in your email.  I have clarified the update language in iTunes, sorry for the confusion.

So – if you have the My Recipe Book app, and your friend also has it, and you want to share your favorite recipe you have already entered into your app, all you have to do is:

- Open the recipe card of the recipe you would like to email your friend

- Touch the arrow icon on the bottom of the recipe card

- Touch the Email button, and an email window will pop up

- Type in the email address of your friend, add a personal note if you would like, and hit send.

- When they get the recipe, they will see at the bottom of the recipe the instructions for how to import it into their app with the app importer.  Those directions are below.

1. Tap and hold the image

2. Touch “save image” to save the image to your iPad

3. Tap here (there will be a link) to open the app importer

4. Once the app opens and imports the recipe, upload the picture you saved from the email

I hope you’re enjoying the update!

Over the past few weeks, we have added quite a few new features to My Recipe Book.  Let us know what you think about them and how they’re working for you.

Check out this article on the best cooking apps for the iPad.  My Recipe Book was listed as one of them.

@AppToday listed My Recipe Book as one of the top apps for the iPad in this tweet.

Here are the newest features:

❀ You can import recipes from other My Recipe Book Users when they email them to you from the app

❀ Printing is available for the grocery list, and individual recipes

❀ The timer works in the background

We still have the same great features that transform your iPad into the perfect cooking companion.  Easily import recipes from the web, type them in to your iPad directly, then set your iPad up in the kitchen, and start cooking!

There are a few new features that make it easier when you’re entering recipes from old recipe cards, torn out magazine pages, or memory.

First, there is now a quick look-up pop-up that comes up when you’re entering ingredients.  So, if you have already added onions, finely chopped as an ingredient, just start typing onions, and everything that contains the letters you have typed will pop up.  Just touch the one you want, and you’re ready to enter the next ingredient.

Second, you can now enter a measurement for the amount of servings.  If your recipe makes 3 dozen cookies, put it as 3 dozen, if it makes 2 pies you can type that right in.

Third, you can now upload more than one photo of your recipe if you like shots of what it looks like going along, or if you just like to take multiple photos.

You can still enter all the important info about your recipe like the name, where it’s from, prep time, cook time, categories, ingredients and directions.

Within My Recipe Book, you can search for recipes by category.  There are several pre-populated categories, or you can customize the list of categories in settings.

You can also search by Ready time.  If you know you only have 30 minutes, search for a recipe that takes less than 30 minutes from start to finish.  If you have a whole afternoon, try a recipe that takes more than 4 hours.

You can hit the favorites button to see everything you have tagged as a favorite, or touch the queue button to see everything you have lined up in the queue.

If you don’t want to have to decide what to make for dinner tonight, just hit the Surprise Me! button, and we’ll serve up a random recipe for you to make.