Why an import failed

The short version

To turn a post or page into a recipe, Masterplan needs the ingredients and steps to exist somewhere as text. A caption, a description, a pinned comment, the page itself. If a recipe is only spoken aloud in a video, or only burned into the pixels of a photo, there is nothing to read and the import will fail.

Instagram and TikTok

These are the most common failures, and the reason is nearly always the same: the creator didn't write the recipe down.

• The recipe is only in the video. Someone talks through the method while cooking and never types it out. There's nothing to import. Your best move is a screenshot of any on-screen text, then import that as a photo.
• The caption says "recipe in comments". Masterplan reads the caption, so a recipe living in a comment often won't come through. Copy the comment text and paste it into a new recipe by hand.
• The caption says "link in bio". Masterplan will try to follow a creator's bio link and find the recipe on the other side, but bio links change and some lead to link-in-bio pages listing dozens of posts. If it can't work out which one you meant, it stops rather than guessing at the wrong recipe.

Websites

Most recipe sites publish their recipes in a structured format that Masterplan can read directly. When a site doesn't, Masterplan loads the page properly — as a browser would — and reads it that way instead. Two things still stop it:

• The page isn't a recipe. A roundup post — "20 easy weeknight dinners" — has twenty recipes behind twenty links and none on the page itself. Open the individual recipe and share that.
• The page is gone or blocked. Deleted posts, expired links, and pages behind a login or a paywall can't be read.

Photos

Photo import reads the text in an image — a cookbook page, a handwritten card, a screenshot. It's the fallback for everything above. What makes it fail is legibility rather than format:

• Shoot straight on, not at an angle, with the page flat.
• Get plenty of light and avoid your own shadow across the page.
• Fill the frame with the recipe. A whole page photographed from a few feet away leaves the text too small to read.
• If the recipe spans two pages, import each one separately and merge them afterwards.

"You've reached your import limit"

This one isn't a failure — it's the free plan's monthly allowance, and it resets each month. Masterplan Edition removes the limit. Recipes you add by hand are unlimited on every plan.

When nothing else works

Every recipe can be added by hand, and it's faster than it sounds — open the Cookbook tab, tap the plus, and choose to add a recipe. Paste the ingredients in one block and Masterplan will split them into separate lines for you.