The merge ingredients dialog allows you to merge multiple ingredients into a single ingredient. It is possible that you may have several versions of an ingredient in your database. They are fundamentally the same ingredient, just named differently, for example, carrots baby, fresh baby carrots, baby carrot etc. The merge ingredient dialog allows you to combine all of these ingredients into a single ingredient and then delete those that you no longer need. This is a very effective way of tidying up superfluous data within your database and thus reducing your database file size.
The merge ingredients dialog will be displayed if you perform one of the following:
•Click the 
toolbar button or
•Select Merge/Bulk delete->Merge ingredients from the Tools Menu.
Resort Bistro will ask you if you wish to perform a database snapshot before you begin the merge process. This will take a backup of your database before any changes are made so you can revert back to the saved copy if you are not happy with your changes. Select "Yes" to take a snapshot or "No" to continue straight to the merge ingredients dialog. See the following image.
The dialog is separated into two main sections. They are the "Select ingredients to merge" section and the "Ingredient selected for merging" section.
Select ingredients to merge
From this section you can select the ingredients you would like to merge. When the dialog first appears, this section will display all ingredients in your database in alphabetical order. If you don't want to view all ingredients, but rather a selection of ingredients you can use one of the following methods.
•Use the "Filter" button to filter ingredients or
•Use the "Find similar ingredients" button to search for similarly named ingredients.
Using the Filter button
The Filter button will allow you to search for ingredients by the following:
•Ingredient Name
•Ingredient Stock Code
•Ingredient Product Code
•Ingredients in a selected Category
•Ingredients from a selected Supplier
•Retail Ingredients
•Non-retail Ingredients
•Incomplete Ingredients
•Ingredients With Pictures
•Ingredients used in selected Menus
•Ingredients modified before or after a certain date
Make your selection in the Filter dialog and those ingredients you have selected to view will be displayed in the browser list. For more information on filtering ingredients see the Filtering ingredients help topic.
Using the Find similar ingredients button
The find similar ingredients button will allow you to search for items that are similarly named. It's possible you may have several ingredients created in your database that are effectively the same ingredient. For example, you may have carrots entered into your ingredient list as carrots fresh, fresh carrots, large carrots, large fresh carrots, carrots fresh large, carrots large fresh etc. See the following image.
In this case you can select the any occurrence of the ingredient within the entire alphabetical list that first appears, and click the "Find similar ingredients" button. See the following image.
This will search your database for any occurrence where similar ingredient names are found and will display them in the browser list. Note: The program will search for any and all of the words in the ingredient name you have selected. In this example, the program will search for the words "carrot" and/or "large" and display the results of any ingredient with either one or both of those words in the ingredient name. See the following image.
Merging ingredients
You can now select the ingredients you wish to merge together as well as selecting which ingredient you wish to keep, and those you wish to delete from your database.
To select the ingredients to merge together, double click on the ingredient name or highlight the name and click the "Add" button. This will add the selected ingredient into the Ingredients selected for merging section. Repeat this until all the ingredients you wish to merge into one are displayed in the ingredients selected for merging section. See the following image.
Ingredients selected for merging section
From this section, once you have selected all those ingredients you wish to merge into one, you must now choose which ingredient you would like to merge all the others into. This process will keep the ingredient you have selected, combining all the information from the other ingredients listed, such as any recipes, menus and unit conversions associated with the other ingredients in the list. It will also delete those ingredients you have chosen to merge, from your database. See the following image.
Once you've selected the ingredient to keep, click the "Merge" button to begin the merge process. A dialog will appear to confirm the merge options you have selected. See the following image.
If you wish to alter your merge selections, click the "No" button. If the details are correct, click the "Yes" button and the merge will begin. Once complete, a dialog will appear to let you know if the merge was successful. See the following image.
Click the OK button. This will return you to the Merge ingredients dialog. If you wish to perform another merge you may do so. If you don't wish to merge any more ingredients, click the Close button and you will be returned to the last opened form.