Mastercook 2020

I have been using MasterCook since the first version was released in the 1990s and swapping recipes and cookbooks with my MasterCook and Living Cookbook friends for over 25 years. I use MasterCook to organize my recipes into cookbooks and use its tools to drag/drop recipes into menus and shopping lists. I can print my menus and shopping lists to PDF files instead of printing directly to my printer. I frequently use this tool to help with my camping meal planning. I even have a separate Pantry List for items I want to track in my camper that are not recipes or food items. If you want to use the online features at MasterCook.com and the mobile apps, you can purchase an online subscription separately. Then you can sync with your online account to access and even edit your recipes and shopping lists when you are away from home and your computer. Then sync those changes with the program on the computer when you return home.

Im not certain why Im giving it two stars instead of one. It installed okay. I tried to import recipes from a prior version using the directions from the publisher. That didnt work. But whatever. I just wanted to make a cookbook with it using a few family recipes. I wasnt interested in sending it in for publication: I just wanted to print and spiral bind a cookbook. The formatting tools are VERY limited: there is no way to make it look nice. I finally gave up and used a free Microsoft recipe template. That wasnt easy, but at least I could format things. Perhaps Im just inept. If you are just looking for a place to store recipes digitally, it might be okay. If you are looking to publish them, you may want to look elsewhere.

Storing recipes. Love the calories, details, etc.

There is no ability to divide a cookbook into chapters.

Over my almost 20 years using MasterCook, I had to update purchase software upgrades 3 times. Because I had gone to Windows 10 and couldnt access my MasterCook 14 recipe files on my own hard drive. I was forced to buy this MasterCook 2020 for over $100. After transferring my recipe files, a lot of recipes disappeared. NOW it goes through their website to print my recipes from my hard drive and I have printing glitches that I cant fix. This company sucks.

I change to this product because it was the next best cookbook application to Living Cookbook, which support for the app mysteriously disappeared, was a sad day when I had to finally let it go. MasterCook series are are currently the best out there, but very non user friendly compared to Living Cookbook. The first mistake I made was creating all my Cookbooks and uploading to the cloud, then deciding I didnt want them out there, I thought the solution was to remove them from the cloud and did so. much to my dismay, over 1500 recipes in 17 cookbooks vanished from not only the cloud but on my computer also. Had to start all over to recover what I had with lots of lost recipes. I learned quickly to constantly backup, backup and backup, to my computer, not the cloud. What led me to this review, is the mysterious disappearance of more than 300 items listed in my main pantry, over three hundred! And to my dismay, looking at my tools folder the .pl file for my pantry was there but empty and non recoverable. Needless to say that sucked. I have had this application now for well over a year plus, have put many, many hours of work into getting things the way I want them then POOF! it disappears in one fail swoop.

Ive been using MasterCook since about version 8, for home use. As far as Im concerned, theyve priced themselves out of the market about 2 or 3 versions ago, but I hung with it up to version 15. They use to be moderately priced and the subscription cost was around $24 per year, its well over doubled that now. If youre looking for a recipe organizer for home use, there are plenty of moderately priced or even free apps that are just as good as this. Dont waste your money on MasterCook...their just NOT WORTH IT!

The only good things I can say is it was easy to install and set up. Ive used mastercook since version 5 but this will be my last one. Its hard to use and doesnt do everything they say it will unless you use the subscription service. Too bad because I was a long time customer but disappointed in this one.

Not as useful as I had hopped. As an accomplished home chef (retired) I now rely on the me knowledge of cooking methods and skills. this accumulation of recipes is almost valueless. (Pardonnez mon pauvre anglaise.)

Using for catering business. User friendly app.