Now You're Cooking! Tip

May 2008

Creating Category Templates For NYC Cookbooks

Some users like to keep several category lists as candidates for new cookbooks. NYC currently uses only one default category list (“catlist.def”) for new cookbooks, but you can maintain more than one personalized category list. There are two ways to approach this: 1) create template cookbooks, or 2) create multiple category list files.

Create Template Cookbooks

One NYC user provided this suggestion, and it is by far the easiest way to manage default categories!

Create several master cookbooks, each with the different categories that you want. For example, make a cookbook called MASTER_CAKES (File… New Cookbook…) and modify the categories to be how you want them. Tweak it as you will, then save it. Next time you want to do a cake cookbook, open this master cookbook then do a Save As (File… Save Cookbook As…) and give it the name you want, then input your recipes into it, leaving the master copy intact for the next time you need it.

Now make a cookbook called MASTER_SEAFOOD, and repeat the process above using a different set of categories appropriate to seafood.

Create Multiple Category List Files

In your NYC user folder, copy the file “catlist.def” to another filename (e.g., “catlist.cakes.def”). Modify “catlist.cakes.def” with a text editor, maintaining the same format – the number of categories in the list goes at the top, and categories are then listed one per line in alphabetical order.

NYC expects the file "catlist.def" to contain the default categories, so when you want to change your default categories to the other list, just copy “catlist.cakes.def” and rename the copy to "catlist.def" before you use NYC to create a new cookbook. When you create a new cookbook, it will have the different default categories.

IMPORTANT:

Before you import recipes into a cookbook with personalized categories, you may want turn off the feature to import new categories (Tools… Options… Import/Export tab… uncheck “transfer new categories”). Or you can map them later to your existing categories using NYC’s Map To… categories feature.