Booklets

A fellow user shares this tip which works in MasterCook 5 and greater.

Recently I've been successfully printing booklets on 8 ½ x 11 paper using MasterCook. I've had experience printing booklets using Microsoft Publisher for Windows and have used this tool to do so with MasterCook recipes by exporting to text format and importing them into Publisher. These booklets, as with books, are printed on both sides of the paper with two pages on each side. Also the paper is printed with landscape orientation. The booklet is assembled by stapling in the middle of the stack of paper and then the stack is folded at the middle. MS Publisher has the capability of correctly numbering these pages. Standard word processors can't do this which includes MS Word. A characteristic of the page numbering is that the sum of the pages on the left and right side of any sheet is a constant. To my pleasant surprise, MasterCook can do this. Incidentally, some people think of booklets as printing two pages on just one side of the paper which are then individually folded and then stacked together and stapled along the left side. Perhaps MasterCook can support this type printing, but I don't know if it can. I've noticed that for you recommend to MasterCook version 5 to try some of the tips that others have shared on the forum for printing two recipes on one side of the paper. One of the tips described printing on 8.5 x 14 paper which was subsequently cut in half. Recently, a MasterCook user expressed frustration with this tip (Jeanne Insalaco) in her desire "...on using a regular size computer paper to make my booklet..." My explanation of how to do that is included in Re: Publishing a cookbook (help) as of Fri Feb 4 17:32:54. The explanation given here is just for printing the recipes of the cookbook. The procedure is easily be extended to include some of the remaining options. For now, I include in the printing the body of a cookbook separate from the rest of the sections. The body is just the recipes. I would suggest starting out in Recipe Browser window to print just a small selection of the cookbook recipes. For example start out by selecting and printing just 4 recipes, then 8, 16,...etc. This will give confidence in the process before selecting Print Range as the Entire Cookbook.

Assuming that selected the recipes have been selected to print then click on the print icon which brings up the Print/Publish Recipe window. Then select a particular recipe Design; Paper = 8.5 x 11 in (don't choose Booklet on Letter), and check Number Pages beginning with 1, Include selection = Recipes; Print range selection = Current Recipe(s); Print on selection =: Short Side; and Orientation = Landscape. Here´s where the primary booklet conditions are set with 8.5 x 11 inch paper landscape printing with 5.5 W x 8.5 H inches per page that is desired.

Now, click on Edit Design button, the recipe design window comes up. Then click the Palette button which brings up the Publish Palette window. Then click the Page tab. This window should show Paper=8.5 x 11 in, Columns=1, and Orientation=Landscape. I selected Start=´One after another´, and entered checks for Folded Booklet, and Number Pages Beginning With: 1. The Start conditions are multiple choice with Start=´On next page' giving a cleaner looking document (but with additional pages).

Now, we have access to the Custom paper button. Select this if you want to change the margin values*. Otherwise, move on to selecting Print Preview... to check the printing and actual printing if it looks okay. I think that Sierra has made actual pamphlet printing a rather simple procedure. Load your printer with a stack of paper. Maybe only one sheet is actually needed say for a 4 recipe booklet print. The number of sheets is not important just keep feeding the input hopper if the printer gets hungry. After you have selected the Print, printing will proceed until about half of the booklet cookbook is printed. How do you know this has occurred? A message automatically comes up and tells you that time has arrived. The message is MasterCook Publish which says in part "Wait until first side has finished. Then place pages back into the paper tray, printed side towards the rear and for BOOKLET: DO NOT rotate the paper, keeping the top up." After all sheets have printed with this message showing, then remove all unprinted sheets from the input of the printer. Then take the pile of printed paper from output and return to input tray of printer for printing of the 2nd half. Then press OK on the message window to continue. The middle sheet of your document should show consecutive page numbers for the left and right side for example page 9 on the left and page 10 on the right side of the sheet.

The printing procedure, just described does not change when the Title Page, Table of Contents, and Recipe Index is included as options shown on the Print/Publish Recipes window. You still wait for the "half-way" signal from the program before reinserting the half printed sheet stack.