January 2006

 

All About Categorizing Recipes

 

Recipes are assigned to categories to help you quickly find related recipes.  You can change a recipe’s category assignments at any time.  You can also control many other aspects of category management.  Here is a comprehensive list of all the power you have at your fingertips with NYC.  These features are listed here in order of difficulty - from easiest to most complicated (the order in which you should practice and master them):

 

View a List of Recipes With Each Recipe’s Category Assignments

 

1.      Select View… Recipe Category Assignments.

 

In your editor window, this will display a list of the recipes in your open cookbook, with each recipe’s categories to the right of the recipe name.

 

List Recipes Assigned to a Specific Category (or Categories)

 

 1.  Open the recipe selection window (Recipes… Recipes…. or the “R” toolbar button).

 2.  Select a category.

 

This will list all recipes in your cookbook that have been assigned to that category.  Note that a recipe can be assigned to more than one category.  To find recipes assigned to multiple categories, multi-select categories (using Cntl-Click) in the recipe selection window.  This will display all recipes that have been assigned to every one of the categories you have selected.

 

List Categories With Assigned Recipes

 

This is a printing option:.

1.      Select File… Print… “categories” and check the “print to file” box.

2.      Press Print, and “Yes” to the prompt to include recipe names in the list.

3.      Provide a filename for the print to file.

4.      Answer “Yes” to the prompt to open the file in your editor.

 

Find All Recipes in a Category Across Cookbooks

 

This is a search operation:

1.      Open the recipe selection window (Recipes… Recipes… or the “R” toolbar button).

2.      Click a category and press the Search button.

3.      In the search keywords window, select “across cookbooks”, leave the keywords textbox blank (this finds all recipes), and press Search.

 

This will display all recipes across cookbooks that have been assigned to that category.  The search will be across cookbooks in the same folder with your open cookbook.  Multi-select categories if you want to limit the search across cookbooks to only those recipes assigned to ALL the categories you select.

 

Perform this same search from the export window (File… Export Recipes…) if you want to export recipes from the search results window (use the Apply button on the search results window).

 

Categorize Recipes

To categorize recipes one at a time:

 

Categorize Recipes from the Recipe Selection Window

 1.  Select a recipe and press the Categorize toolbar button.  Click categories for the selected recipe.  Press Save in the category window.

 

Categorize Recipes from the Recipe Edit Window

 1.  Open a recipe and press the Categories tab.  Click categories for the selected recipe and Save the recipe.

 

To categorize multiple recipes at once:

 

Assign Multiple Recipes to Categories

1.      Select Recipes… Categorize Multiple Recipes…

2.      Select recipe(s) in the right hand listbox.  Click a category in the far left listbox.

3.      Press the < button to assign selected recipes to the selected category.

 

Auto-Assign Recipes to Categories (see next section)

 

Automatic Categorization of Recipes

This operation will automatically categorize any unassigned recipes.  It will not change any categorization on recipes already categorized.

 

1.      Select Recipes… Categorize Multiple Recipes… (or press the small toolbar button with the chef hat and A on it).

2.      Press the Go button in the Auto-Assign frame.

 

Recipes are categorized according to your keyword specifications, so you can customize how NYC auto-assigns recipes.  See the section on Customizing the Auto-Categorization feature for more details.

 

Adding or Deleting Categories in a Cookbook

Each cookbook has can have up to 500 unique categories, and the categories can vary from one cookbook to the next.  To modify the list of categories for a cookbook:

 

1.      Select Recipes… Categories…

2.      Add or Delete categories using this window.

 

Deleting categories will not delete recipes assigned to those categories.  It will just remove that category assignment for recipes assigned to a deleted category.

 

Finding and Deleting Empty Categories

To find and delete empty categories:

 

1.      Select Recipes… Categories…

2.      Press the Find Empty… button.

3.      In the list of empty categories, select those you wish to delete, or press Select All to select them all.

4.      Press Delete button on the empty categories window.

5.      Press Save on the edit category window.

 

Merging Categories (Mapping One to Another)

Sometime you want to reassign all recipes from one or more categories to another category.  For example, after a big import you end up with three similar categories: “fish”, “shellfish”, seafood”.  You want to reassign all recipes in the “fish” and “shellfish” categories to the “seafood” category so you can eliminate the “fish” and “shellfish” categories.

 

To categorize all recipes in one or more categories into another category:

 

1.      Select Recipes… Categories…

2.      Select the “fish” and “shellfish” categories and press the Map To… button.

3.      In the Map To window, select the “seafood” category and press Map… button.

 

This procedure will not unassign any recipes from any categories – it simply additionally assigns all recipes in the “from” category or categories to the “to” category.  You can delete the categories from which the mapping was done if you wish.  Deleting a category does not delete recipes in that category – deleting a category simply unassigns recipes from that category.  All other category assignments remain for the affected recipes.

 

Changing the Default Categories Used For New Cookbooks

New cookbooks are started with a default category list.  To specify the default categories to use for a new cookbook:

 

 1.  Select Tools… Data Management… Categories tab… Edit… button in the Default Categories frame.

 2.  Add or Delete categories to the default category list.

 

Customizing the Auto-Categorization Feature

To control how NYC auto-assigns recipes to categories:

 

1.  Select Tools… Data Management… Categories tab… Keyword Strings … button in the Customize Auto-Assign feature frame.

2.  Add or delete category keywords and keyword substrings to direct NYC’s auto-assign feature.

 

 

 


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