Well , I've now tried 3 electronic recipe managers....here's my humble opinion!!

Well, if some of you have been following the on-going saga of how to paste and print recipes from TKL, . (just keep on scrolling down and you'll find it)....I finally completed downloading two electronic recipe managers, recommended by Betsy at TKL and Csally's posting and entered some recipes into them to try. Anyway here's my humble opinion of them.... I'm going to purchase one!

Last choice:
1. The one I now use is located at www.kraftfoods.com
2. Advantages are it's free to consumers and has three separate sections including ingred., directions, and notes to cut and paste recipes into from TKL.
3. Disadvantages include you have to go onto the internet site to use it, the more recipes you have, the longer it takes to load on plus there's no options to change font, etc.
4. The cost is FREE

Second choice:
1. This one was located at TKL's software site link to www.alberts.com
2. The shareware program is called ...The Recipe Processor 95/NT
3. Advantages are the trial version is close to the full registered version; you can add pictures, change font, etc. There are also some recipes given as well.
4. Disadvantages include this nasty little message that tells you about the 30 day trial period. It appears with almost every icon click with the mouse.... and you can't change the design or layout of the recipe, except for it to be either index or full page format.
5. The cost is free for the first 30 days and if registered, it costs $25.95 US
(which for us Canadians is probably $40. Cdn......which seems much too expensive for what you are getting. But if you're only entering recipes occassionally, you may want to check it out as just shareware.

First choice:
1. This was recommended by both Betsy at TKL and Csally in her posting. It's called MasterCook Deluxe 4.0 There's also a MasterCook Suite Deluxe which contains recipe books on light cooking and from G. Kerr which seem like a good deal.
2. Although I downloaded a demo version from the www.sierra.com link at TKL, it didn't really show me much. I couldn't enter or print out a recipe. But I did go into their readme files extensively and saw their icons, etc.
3. Advantages are that there are a lot more features than the Recipe Processor Program. You can add clipart to recipes, set up cookbooks, design artwork on each recipe page, etc. There's even a spellcheck too...There's also over 40 video clips included (need a CD rom) on cooking tips, etc. plus many, many features. It's certainly a deluxe version and worth using.

4. Disadvantages ....which takes me full circle.......is that you still have to use Notepad to copy and paste! Now, doesn't that beat all!!! But you can format it anyway you want, including setting up a template so that all your recipes can look the same.
5. COST ....this is the best part. Betsy at TKL says there's a rebate on the program. If we purchase it now, it'll cost only $17.00.......still US $ but you get so much more for the dollar as compared to #2 choice. It's very user friendly too.
6. I have lots of ideas for its use including a Christmas cookbook for friends and better organization of my recipe files!

Thanks to Betsy at TKL and to Csally for their advice. Now I can finally get back to baking!!!!!!