Transferring Recipes

Okay, I'm going to tiptoe into this forum and find out just how much you can dumb down an answer for me! LOL

I'm using this weekend to explore my wee pocket Edge, putting it to the test with photo files and trying out the journal aspect for work. I'm gathering that the enclosed cable will do a direct transfer so my fingers, toes and eyes are crossed, hoping it works.

I was thinking of other things I'd like to try out, ensuring that I keep this device and don't follow the lemmings at HSN and send it back. What I could REALLY use is information on "How to create recipe documents?" of my 200+ favourite recipes that I make, all the time. I used to store them online, but the site I used got bought and sold by a scalliwag, so I copied/pasted and emailed ALL 200+ of my recipes to myself so I wouldn't lose them.

I just saw the "Docs To Go" area of the Edge and registered, but have ZERO DESIRE to type out all 200 of those recipes, all over again!

How to you suggest I proceed? Should I copy and paste them ALL into seperate WORD documents on my SONY PC, store it on a flash drive and then try downloading them to my pocket Edge? I bought one of thoese mini cards from HSN when I bought my pocket edge but really don't know what to do with it. (I know, I know...I'm a novice... )

As a landscaper, I'm often working at "raw" job sites: no electricity, no running water, no bathroom and certainly NO wi-fi, so I need to be able to access these recipes without using the net. I hate having to drive home, turn on the computer, wait for everything to start up, and then find the recipe in my email folder. I'd like to just find the right file, instantly, on my pocket Edge, and head to the grocery store right from the job site.

Treat me like a five year old...a really slow 5 year old, in regards to your suggestions. LOL

Looking forward to trying this out, this weekend, while I'm baking Peanut Butter-Pumpkin Muffins. Yum!

If they were my recipes I would copy or import them all into one word doc, the save as a PDF file. They will be searchable, and open on the eink or the tablet that way. You did not say how you mailed them, are they just copied into the body of the email?
Plus, install dropbox for easy file transfers.

cheyennedonna: it took me a couple of months to email myself the copied and pasted recipes from that site. Every day or so, I'd go there, copy it and paste it into an email; I'd then send each one to my msn.com account. They were alphabetical on the website so I sent them to myself, alphabetized.

Are you saying that you'd stick ALL 200 of them in one single document? That doesn't make sense to me, simple because the file would be massive and I'd have to scroll through 199 recipe's worth of data to get to the one I wanted.

Could you describe Dropbox to me, please? I'm guessing that that is something that I can download on line to my pocket Edge, correct?

Originally Posted by Bee

cheyennedonna: it took me a couple of months to email myself the copied and pasted recipes from that site. Every day or so, I'd go there, copy it and paste it into an email; I'd then send each one to my msn.com account. They were alphabetical on the website so I sent them to myself, alphabetized.

Are you saying that you'd stick ALL 200 of them in one single document? That doesn't make sense to me, simple because the file would be massive and I'd have to scroll through 199 recipe's worth of data to get to the one I wanted.

Could you describe Dropbox to me, please? I'm guessing that that is something that I can download on line to my pocket Edge, correct?

If you put them in one single word doc and save as a PDF from office your PDF will be a searchable file, type a key word into the find box on a PC and the Docs to Go reader or the search box on the readers eink and the first recipe to contain that word will open, each time you hit enter or search a new search will open the next page containing that word. Plus there are freeware programs that will allow you to add bookmarks to your pdf, http://flavianopetrocchi.blogspot.com/ and http://jpdftweak.sourceforge.net/
Dropbox needs to be installed on your PC and your edge, it is cloud storage, free, and available in the edge app store , link for the PC download http://www.dropbox.com/

Just to add a bit to cheyennedonna's excellent recommendations... I myself have recipes in one document, where each recipe starts on a new page. As cheyennedonna says, this makes it really easy to find a recipe in one file, rather than managing 200 files.

One hint, though. Set your document page size (or at least when printing it to PDF) to something like 4.25"x5.5" (essentially a quarter page) given the small screen on your Pocket eDGe. You may want to play with the exact settings with a document with only one recipe.

Dropbox, by the way, is a way so that if you drag and drop files into a dropbox folder on your PC, it will automagically appear on your eDGe without having to do anything. You need to install the dropbox software on your PC (using the link cheyennedonna posted) and on your eDGe (go to Library, pick "Store" in the top right dropdown box, then "Apps" and then look for it in the listing).

Thanks, everyone; this makes sense, the way it's been re-explained to me. I'm currently experimenting with a smaller file, simply to try it out.

Let us know how it works out, Bee!

If you are interested, I could write a small app that would let you search through them and display the found recipes in a list. You would then click in the one ou want to see the full details.

(I've been thinking of writing something like this anyway)
Andy.

I like to cook using my edge as a recipe book too, and I have two alternatives to doc and PDF depending on what is most workable for you:
-Image files, one per recipe. Using a screen capture program like FastStone or even just built-in Windows commands like Alt-Print Screen followed by a paste into MS Paint. Pictures can be accessed as file names or you could flip through them. This is a low-tech solution though and has it's limitations.
-epub file. There are free programs like Sigil for making epubs that are pretty user friendly and you would need to do little more than paste the text in and split each into "chapters." Epubs can be read on the eInk side and they not only reflow the text if they are long, but they can have tables of contents or indexs that are linked and would jump straight to the recipe when clicked with the stylus.

The epub format would be particularly better than PDF or images because it's both searchable and the text size can be increased/decreased easily on whatever device you're using so that it's easy to read.

I'll start work on my recipe book app, sounds like a few people might like it.

andy.

Good stuff, Andy

Originally Posted by mrspaceman

I'll start work on my recipe book app, sounds like a few people might like it.

andy.

I would love one!

okay, I'll make the interface similar to my book list. I'll have to have some way to add new recipes (button in the toolbar), I can make it import but would need some examples of what to import.

A short click will open the details of the recipe (with the option to create an epub to view on the e-ink side) and a long click will allow you to edit the metadata of the recipe (it'll have tags on the recipes so that you can filter on the tags and ingredients used)

One thing Bee originally lamented was that she had spent a lot of time and effort to type 200 recipes into one system and now had no easy way to transfer them to another system. Ideally your app, Andy, will also provide an export of all recipes to a universally useable format that could be imported into Word, or a text editor, etc.