How do you create a database of recipes

[tbeiswenger]

I have a large file of recipes that I'd like to better organize, so that it would be easy to query based on subject, ingredients, etc. Any suggestions or, better yet, templates out there?

[r4zoli]

have a large file of recipes

In what format? text file or spreadsheet?

If in text format no easy way, you could create database and insert all data into it.

If stored in some structured way (spreadsheet, csv file)you can import it into database file.

[rudolfo]

If it is really one file this looks like a typical problem of converting visually formatted text into structured text. There are probably a few tools available (sed, perl, txt2html, etc) that can do something like that, but I am quite sure it will not work out of the box. In other words you have to give some more information on how your recipe file looks like.

• Is it really a single file?
• How many recipes? Fifty? Hundreds? More than thousand?
• What format? plain text? OpenOffice Writer/Calc? There must be a reason why you ask in this forum ,-)
• How are the recipes separated? Empty Paragraphs? Page-Break?

Okay, the next comment would freak me out, because I belong to the type of persons who get good vibrations when they look at a properly structured document. Have you thought about using a desktop search tool? Google Desktop search and probably also the MS index service can index text documents. I guess in many cases this might be good enough to find recipes related with onion or whatever you search for. Right, if all is in one file, then the desktop search won't help.

[tbeiswenger]

The file that I am creating is a spreadsheet, but I also plan to create a form that will allow for easier data entry. I've created databases before, but had hoped that someone out there had already done a recipe database and had some kind of template.

[r4zoli]

The file that I am creating is a spreadsheet,

From your earlier post I think that you have already recipes in file.

You can create recipes database with Table wizard, select Personal, and from drop down choose Recipes table.

I also plan to create a form that will allow for easier data entry

It will work with database, but not with spreadsheet.

[keme]

To create one from scratch wil take a bit of work. Search the web. There seems to be upwards of a hundred different titles, and most are targeted towards family/personal households, by the look of things.
-Some are free and many have a moderate price.
-Some have plugins for your PDA/mobile, so you don't need the computer on the kitchen table.
-Some will generate shopping lists.
-Some come with builtin recipe library (but you can still add your own).
-Some will converts units according to your locale (whether you prefer liters and grams or ounces and pints).

If you need to hook into it from OOo, look for ODBC connectivity.

[jrkrideau]

I have a large file of recipes that I'd like to better organize, so that it would be easy to query based on subject, ingredients, etc. Any suggestions or, better yet, templates out there?

Unless you are doing this to learn about data bases then it seems a waste of time to re-invent the wheel.

http://grecipe-manager.sourceforge.net/ ? I have never used it but it looks interesting.