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In the thread " Where do you keep all your books?" Fyretigger mentioned "Practically speaking, in most cases, this means copying favorite recipes into my own digital cookbook".

I like the idea of having the recipes at home recorded digitally on the phone for access when traveling, or for discussions with others when away from home.

This has me asking......What software do folks use on their phones for digitally recording recipes? Can the application do image to text conversions? How are the recipes filed? Are there categories? Can the recipes be shared via text or email from within the application?

I can do this on my phone via Android. Take a picture of the recipe text. Go to  the photos app and select the text and then copy & paste it into your chosen document. You'll almost certainly have to reformat it.

Thanks Fyretigger for the information. I'm an old retired IT guy myself. In fact I drive Jane nuts sometimes.........<emoji smile>

Disclaimer............I am not endorsing a particular application.................This is all new to me.

I have been doing some research and an application which seems to be what I am looking for is Recipe Keeper.

Here's their online site: https://recipekeeperonline.com/

Here's a pretty decent review: https://kowalskimountain...ecipe-keeper-app-review/ (read the comments afterward about using the cookbook funtion for PDF backup)

I have downloaded the application on the iPhone. I am using the free version at the moment. It has the same functionality as the Pro version, but a limit on the number of recipes.

Note: although you can use the application on multiple devices on the same platform, say IOS, if you want to use the application on another platform, say Windows, you need to buy a license for that platform also. That said, the recipes are supposed to be transferable across platforms.

I'll keep this posting updated as I become more familiar with the application.

Also an old CS and SE person....

I've had a love of cooking for so long, that I had a collection of thousands of recipes on paper - collected from magazines, books, doctors waiting rooms, friends, family. Goodness so many. One summer I set myself a project to digitise them, and saved them all into a Dropbox Folder with file names that described the dish somewhat. Using Dropbox meams I have access to them anywhere. The files are all searchable PDFs. I also have a paid search app that is better than the search facility on Macs (not bought specifically for this purpose, but it is handy here too.)

When I joined EYB, I had another project one summer, to enter them all as personal recipes. As part of this I added a number to each filename, so that I can choose a recipe in EYB and then search for it easily via the number. If someone else is interested in the recipe, I can send them the digitised copy.

This has worked very well for me, and honestly EYB has been a godsend in having access to the recipes. But I don't doubt there are apps that perhaps more convenient.

(Also, I have so many books that are not indexed in EYB that to formally index each one would have taken me too long. Also lots of them had recipes I was no longer interested in, being vegetarian. So another summer project was to enter the recipes I was interested in from those books as personal recipes, and I could quickly add the ingredients that suited the ones I always have on hand. This has worked well too, although Personal Recipes are the poor second cousin to the formal indexes as far as searching via author, notes etc etc go. This can be quite frustrating at times. I keep tags for the book that include the author name but they are not searchable. etc etc)

Like several others who have commented here I too am a computing scientist and software engineer who specialised in databases and document management software for corporate clients. Also a pain towards Jane because I find the "filter" search mechanism to be deficient and tedious to use; there are times when I want a recipe for something that is an ingredient in other reciopes. So far I have not found a solution to that problem. At times the idea of downloading all my bookshelf data to dump into a database on my machine so I can perform serachs that disambiguate ingredieent from its recipe has reared its head.

Seems to have a lot of positive reviews. Thanks.....I'll download it and give it a try.

Also use Copy me that on my ipad and I can grab recipes easily on ipad.  What  I like about Copy Me that is it will also grab Japanese language reicioe titles and pictures.  I just need to copy and paste the ingredients and directions  only for Japanese sites.  You have the option of sharing the recipes with a community or keep it private.  I keep Japanese language recipes private and others mostly public.  Using the monthly meal plan, it easily puts the recipes I want to cook on each day of the month and I can go back on months or years as well.  It is so useful in every way. I have almost all my recipes there since I signed on as a premium member when it was started.  It is maintained by one person and she does a terrific job with it. She replies back very promply to inquiries. It is also beautiful because the photos are big. Much better than pepperplate. I have over 27,000 recipes there and I would be lost without Copy Me that.  I may spend more time there than even here at times. EYB and CMT goes hand in hand for me. 

When away from home but when I have an access to a kitchen I open Copy Me That to use for my cooking using my ipad.  I no longer have to drag books on my travels like in the past esp when out camping.  Having kindle cookbooks on ipad helps too. 

¡Gracias!, thank you, I will download it too

For those who are familiar with Copy Me That.......

If I have a recipe in a binder how can I import the recipe into Copy Me That?

It appears CopyMeThat is not going to work for most of what I would like to do. It does work great for website recipes, but does not have a feature for importing recipes from documents or pictures.

From their website help/FAQ

"There isn't an automatic way to get text and image recipes into Copy Me That at this time, but there are some things to try

- You can always create a new, blank recipe in Copy Me That and either type in the recipe or, if it's a computer file, use copy-paste. That is, of course, a fair bit of work.



- Some people use their mobile device's voice-to text-option, which allows them to add a recipe by reading it out loud.



- Newer iPhones and Androids now have the ability to read text from images. To use this, create a new recipe in Copy Me That and put the cursor in the text field. The iPhone now gives you the option to point your camera at an image and read from that image. On an Android, the "extract text" option is usually in the 3-dot menu that appears when the cursor is in a text field.



- You can also create a new recipe in Copy Me That and just add your recipe as an image. You will probably find, though, that the size of the image doesn't really let you see the text.



- It was previously possible to upload recipes to Google Drive and copy them from there, but that is no longer possible"

Perhaps I'll tak a look at Paprika next, since it has also been mentioned in this thread.

It appears Paprika is a one-time cost of $4.99. It does not appear to have an evaluation copy. I'd say $4.99 is not a lot, but I would not wish to buy it and find out I cannot import recipes from documents or photos.

For those who have experience with Paprika, can I import recipes from our recipe binder? Either by OCR of the photo, or a scanned document? If so, does import the ingredients and directions as editable text?

Thanks is advance for the input.

Some final notes.....

Paprika is designed for importing website recipes. I had no response from questions I asked. Support is important to me so that sealed the deal on my thoughts about the app.

I ended up going with Recipe Keepers.

It's pricey to buy for the multiple platforms (iOS + Windows = $50 US), but it has so many import features that it is the only app which would allow me to enter recipes from a number of different formats, and, it was easy to figure out and use. Add to this the quick response to questions I have and it's an easy choice.

I likely will not put all of the binder recipes in. That would take a large effort. But it will be an easy way to keep my prized recipes onhand when I travel.