Saving a Recipe from the Web into Your Recipes Collection

6 days ago

5 min read

You found a recipe online and want to keep it in NM Collector CP: the ingredients, the directions, the times, the nutrition and a photo. An AI chat assistant such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini or Claude can read the page and write it all into a file that NM Collector CP imports into your Recipes collection. This post walks through a real one, Barefeet in the Kitchen’s Cranberry Christmas Cake.

Making the blank import file and running the import are explained step by step in Importing Items into NM Collector CP: The Basics; this post covers what is particular to recipes and web pages.

What you need: NM Collector CP for Windows, Mac or Linux, version 2.3.2 or later, and an AI chat assistant that can open web addresses. Most can, though some free plans can’t, and some websites block AI tools.

Privacy: what goes where

A web recipe raises fewer privacy questions than a receipt, but a few things are worth knowing.

The AI company sees your request. Your chat, including the recipe’s web address, goes to the company that runs the AI and usually stays in your chat history. Depending on the service and your settings, it may be reviewed by staff or used to train future models. For a public recipe that is rarely a concern. The general advice for documents is in From Paper to Collection.
Your collection stays on your computer. NM Collector CP has no connection to any AI. The AI sees only what you paste. If you paste the column guide from the blank import file, look at it first: it lists the values already in your drop-down lists, such as the names of recipes you have and the web addresses they came from.
NM Collector CP doesn’t go on the internet for you. The import never downloads anything, so the website never sees NM Collector CP. You save the recipe’s photo yourself, with your web browser, the same as when you look at the page (Step 3). A web address in the file’s picture column is marked as not imported.
The AI can’t save the photo onto your computer. It works on its company’s computers. That is why the photo is a step you do.

Step 1: Make a blank import file for Recipes

Select Recipes and choose File > Export > Blank Import File, as in The Basics. The Recipes heading row has 41 columns, most of them for tabs a recipe never uses. We kept these 14:

ID > Name,ID > Category,ID > Include In Reports?,Desc > Prep Time,Desc > Cook Time,Desc > Ready In,Desc > Servings,Desc > Serving Size,Desc > Calories per Serving,Desc > Fat per Serving,Desc > Cholesterol per Serving,Desc > Source,Data > Data Sheet,Picture file(s)

Data > Data Sheet is the item’s Data tab, a page of free text: the right place for the ingredients and directions.

Step 2: Ask the AI

Start a new chat and paste the request. We keep ours in a text file, so the next recipe only needs a new web address and a new picture name.

Here it is as text:

Read this recipe: https://barefeetinthekitchen.com/cranberry-christmas-cake/

If you can't open the page, say so and stop; don't fill in the recipe from memory or guess.
Make a CSV file I can import into my recipe collection. Use exactly this heading row, in this order:
ID > Name,ID > Category,ID > Include In Reports?,Desc > Prep Time,Desc > Cook Time,Desc > Ready In,Desc > Servings,Desc > Serving Size,Desc > Calories per Serving,Desc > Fat per Serving,Desc > Cholesterol per Serving,Desc > Source,Data > Data Sheet,Picture file(s)
Then one row for the recipe:

* ID > Name: the recipe's title.
* ID > Category: exactly one of: Appetizer | Snack; Bread; Breakfast and Brunch; Dessert; Drink; Main Dish; Salad; Side Dish; Soup | Stew | Chili
* ID > Include In Reports?: yes
* Prep Time, Cook Time, Ready In: as the page gives them, for example "20 minutes" or "1 hour 30 minutes".
* Servings: a number. Serving Size, Calories, Fat and Cholesterol per Serving: as the page gives them, for example "1 cup", "320", "14 g". Leave a value empty if the page doesn't give it; don't estimate.
* Desc > Source: the website's name followed by the page's address.
* Data > Data Sheet: the ingredients, one per line, then a blank line, then the directions as numbered steps, one per line.
* Picture file(s): cranberry-christmas-cake.jpg

CSV rules: comma separated; copy the heading row exactly as written, including the ">" signs; put any value that contains a comma, a quote or a line break in double quotes, and double any quote inside it. Don't add any columns or rows.
Give me the result as a downloadable file named recipe.csv. If you can't make a file, put the CSV in a code block so I can copy it into a text file and save it as recipe.csv.

What the recipe rules do:

“If you can’t open the page, say so and stop.” An AI that can’t reach a page may write a recipe from what it “remembers” about cranberry cakes. This line stops that.
Category names the exact choices in the Category drop-down, so every recipe lands in one of them.
Times and nutrition are taken as the page gives them, and left empty when it doesn’t.
Source keeps the site’s name and address with the recipe, so you can find it again.
Data Sheet puts the ingredients, a blank line, and numbered directions on the Data tab.
Picture file(s) is the name you’ll give the photo when you save it. The AI only copies it.

Step 3: Save the answer and the photo

Save the AI’s file as recipe.csv in your import folder. (If it gives you a code block instead of a file, The Basics shows how to save text as a CSV file.) This is what ours looked like:

Then save the photo. On the recipe’s web page, right-click the photo, choose Save image as, go to your import folder, and save it as cranberry-christmas-cake.jpg, the name in the request.

If the saved photo ends in .webp, the Pics tab can’t show it. Open it in Paint (Windows) or Preview (Mac) and save it again as JPEG.

Step 4: Import and check

Select Recipes and choose File > Import > Items From External Sources, then recipe.csv. Every column is already matched; click Preview, then Import. The Basics walks through each window.

Leave the report open and look at the new recipe. The Desc tab has the times, servings, nutrition and source; Serving Size is empty, as on the web page.

The Pics tab has the photo you saved.

The Data tab has the ingredients and the numbered directions.

If anything is wrong, click Undo This Import on the report, fix the request or the file, and import again.

If something goes wrong

The AI says it can’t open the page. Some sites block AI tools. In your browser, save the page as a PDF (Print, then Save as PDF or Microsoft Print to PDF), attach the PDF, and change the first line to “Read the attached recipe.” From Paper to Collection covers working from a PDF.
The picture is marked “web address, not imported”. The AI put the photo’s web address in the file instead of the file name. Save the photo as in Step 3, put its file name in the last column of recipe.csv, undo the import if you already ran it, and import again.
The recipe has no photo. Leave Picture file(s) empty, or add a picture of your own later on the Pics tab.

More examples, including scanned cookbook pages, are in More Ways to Fill a Collection with an Import.