SUPPORT CENTER

Support resources:

• Frequently Asked Questions (below)
• Online Help
• Message Board

Frequently Asked Questions

I.  Registering the Product and Using the Forums

A:  Simply download it from our download center.  The evaluation version is the same code as the full product; your Serial Number (a long string of letters and digits beginning with the letter S) was automatically emailed to you.  Sometimes, our product confirmation emails get erroneously filed as "junk mail" by some spam filters -- please be sure to check all your email folders.

A:  No problem!  Visit this page and we'll resend it to you.

A:  First-time users of the recipe archive simply need to sign up for the recipe archive to use it.  When you bought BigOven for Windows, you bought the recipe software application.  At present, this does not automatically register you to use the forums (this is a work item for us for the future).  Simply click "sign up" and enter your email address to use the archive, and create a username as prompted; there is no extra charge.

A:  We use an off-the-shelf program to run our message board, and for the time being, this message board software uses a separate user database from our list of purchasers and BigOven.com recipe archive members.   This means that while you may have already signed up to use BigOven.com, or purchased the product, you need to go through another, albeit quick, process to post on the forum.

Simply click the "Register" link in the upper right corner of the forums.   If you don't see a link marked "Register", then click the one that says "Logout" first. 

(We know, it's rather silly and inconvenient to have multiple user databases, but for the time being, we've prioritized other work higher, so we're stuck with this process for now.  We appreciate your patience.)

II.  Installation and Setup

A:  You're probably missing an updated version of the Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC), which is a free library distributed by Microsoft, and included with later operating systems.  (We do not distribute this with our main setup program because the vast majority of machines now have MDAC installed.)  The earlier versions shipping with Win9x have been significantly improved.   Please visit this page, download MDAC_TYP.EXE, run MDAC_TYP.EXE to install it, and re-run BigOven. 

Note too that BigOven also requires Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5.5 or later, which you can check via the Help/About menu option in Internet Explorer.  Please visit www.microsoft.com/ie to get the latest version.

A:  We are investigating why this might be happening during setup on some machines.

If you are running Windows 2000, Windows XP or NT, first, be sure that you are running setup from an account with Administrator Privileges.  

If that doesn't resolve it, try to register the control manually:

1)  Go to the Windows Start Menu
2)  Choose “Run…"
3)  At the command line, type:

regsvr32 pvoutlookbar.ocx

4)  If you get a file not found error (for some versions of BigOven, pvoutlookbar.ocx was installed to a different directory), try:

             regsvr32 "c:\program files\lakefront software\bigoven\pvoutlookbar.ocx"

This should manually register the control, and it resolves the issue on most machines. 

A:  Please see this forum thread for resolution.

III.  Getting Recipes into BigOven

A:  Yes!  Currently, BigOven is able to import MealMaster (.MMF) recipe files and original MasterCook (.MX2, .MXP) files, and those of Cook'n.  In addition, you can paste any recipe in "* Exported from BigOven *" and "* Exported from MasterCook *" format into the program.

A:  Yes!  With BigOven's integrated web browser and easy to use Screen Import feature, importing recipes from any website is a snap.  See the "Screen Import" feature on the Edit menu to get started.

IV.  Publishing Recipes and Syncing to PDA's

A:  Yes!  You can post recipes to BigOven.com with one click of the mouse (just click the Post to Web button on the toolbar!).  You can also Publish recipes to your own website using one of seven recipe layout themes.  See "Publish to HTML" on the File menu.

Notice that once you publish your recipes with BigOven to your website, other BigOven users will be able to instantly import your recipes!  No programming is required.  Want us to link to your site?  Simply post a notice in our Forum.

A:   In active development.  Stay tuned for details!  (Pocket PC users -- have you checked out PocketShop yet?)

Got other questions?  Please visit our Message Board.