Can I scan recipes from magazines and cookbooks?

Yes. You can scan images directly into Living Cookbook but you can't scan recipes directly into Living Cookbook. Your recipe scans need to be converted to text first. This is done using optical character recognition (OCR) software. Almost all modern scanners come with OCR software so, chances are, if you own a scanner you also own OCR software. To scan a recipe into Living Cookbook, please try the following:

1. Scan your recipe with with your scanner's OCR option turned on.
2. Copy the resulting recipe text.
3. Run Living Cookbook 2025.
4. On the Action menu, select New Recipe.
5. Click the Capture tab.
6. Paste the recipe text into the capture box (the large white box in the middle of the window).
7. Select (highlight) the recipe name.
8. Click the Recipe Name button.
9. Select the recipe ingredients.
10. Click the Ingredients button.
11. Repeat the process for the remaining recipe elements.
12. Click OK

For more information of scanning recipes and recipe capture, please see the following Living Cookbook 2025 help topics:

• Recipe capture tutorial (under Getting started -> Tutorials).
• Copying recipes from the Internet or text files (under Working with recipes, cookbooks and chapters -> Working with recipes).
• Scanning recipes with flatbed or pen scanners (under Working with recipes, cookbooks and chapters -> Working with recipes).
• Working with recipe images (under Working with recipes, cookbooks and chapters -> Working with recipes).

Article ID: 32

First Published: 2/23/2010

Last Revision: 10/12/2011