Most nutrition software will generate a recipe report. The common characteristic they share is that these reports are almost always generated in a "fixed format." You may have more than one fixed format to select from, but once you select the format, you've done pretty much all you can do to influence the look and the contents of your final recipe report. For this reason, fixed format recipe reports are not suitable for publication-quality projects (like a cookbook or a booklet of recipes for clients).

The typical method most people use to create and publish a cookbook is to enter the information twice - they enter it once in the nutrition software to generate the nutrient analysis and then again into a word processor format for the publisher. After the author enters all the ingredients and amounts, she generates the analysis. When this is done, the author types this information into a word processor to generate the publishable version.

Doing things twice is not generally recognized as a good use of time, yet this is how so many cookbooks are written today. At least one high-end nutrition software product solves this problem by allowing users to set up a "template file" that looks exactly like the finished recipe report that needs to be generated except for one thing... they insert "macros" ("placeholders") where the actual value for the final report should be placed.

In the recipe template file, the user inserts a macro called ^Recipe Name^ in place of the actual Recipe Name. When you generate the report, the actual recipe name will appear in place of the macro. If you boldface the macro, center it on the top line, and put it in 36 point Times New Roman, your actual recipe name in your report will be boldfaced and centered on the top line. The font will be 36 point Times New Roman.

Lay out your recipe any way you want your final report to be formatted. Select which nutrients you want to include and what order you want to include them in. Put your nutrients (or any other recipe data) in a table if desired and use as many or as few columns as you wish. Make the table invisible if you wish. Or give it a fancy border. At least one nutrition and fitness software package includes sample custom recipe template files for you (in both word processor and web page formats) for you to play with and become familiar with.

Once you edit your recipe template file, you can generate all your recipes with it... and they will all be formatted in exactly the same way. This is something that can take painstaking hours in the standard word processor approach. Template let you get every recipe formatted exactly alike.

Save your recipe reports in Rich Text Format (RTF). This is a format that you can view, edit, print or transmit with MS Word, Word Perfect, or any other modern word processor.

Save your recipes as custom formatted web pages. In addition to custom word processor pages, At least one nutrition and fitness software package also lets you create custom recipe web pages. This makes it easy to support a "Recipe-a-Day" web page. To do this, you create a custom template for HTML (web page) format. A basic knowledge of HTML is required, but the results are impressive. Your template file allows you to use insert your web page navigation bars if desired. You can point to any images on your server. Insert any links you wish to include. When you are finished designing your page, just select this template and the software will format any recipe for you as a ready-to-use customized web page. Just upload to your server and link to it.

You can generate custom template-driven reports (both word processor and web page formatted) for Meals and Personal Food Items as well.

Note: This description is a feature that is available in at least one nutrition and fitness software product. In some cases, this feature may be available in a variety of nutrition software products. When this feature is available, it will be implemented in different ways by different products. The description provided here is an accurate description of how this feature works in at least one of these products.