Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your ING file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.
Convert ING to another file type
To convert ING ingredients to another format, you need MasterCook or other Database software.
Convert a file to ING
To convert other file formats to the "Proprietary Recipe Data File" file type, you need software like MasterCook or a similar tool.
About ING files
An .ING file is a proprietary database file primarily used as a MasterCook Ingredients File. It stores essential culinary data such as ingredient names, measurement units, and nutritional profiles. Users utilize these files to build comprehensive, customized digital recipe collections. The format is managed by the MasterCook recipe software suite, a program originally created by Sierra On-Line and later distributed by ValuSoft. In rare scenarios, an .ING file might also function as an Atari 8-bit ING 15 Image or an INGVAR Forestry Simulation file. The main disadvantage of the .ING format is its closed, proprietary ecosystem. Users cannot open or edit these files natively on smartphones, standard web browsers, or alternative recipe applications. To access the data, you generally need a paid license for the desktop software. This creates a significant vendor lock-in problem if you want to share a recipe database with someone who does not own the software. To bypass these limitations, users often want to convert the data into accessible, open formats. The best conversion targets are CSV (for spreadsheet software like Excel) or plain TXT. Extracting the data into these formats makes the ingredient lists universally readable, though you will permanently lose the seamless database integration and advanced nutritional calculation features of the original software. This file format is notoriously difficult to convert because there is no public specification for its internal architecture. Standard online converters fail because only the original software can properly read or export the structured data. Even if full database conversion fails, our tool can inspect the binary file and extract readable embedded text strings, helping you salvage your recipe data.
Convert.Guru analyzes your ING file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert ING file to TMP, TEMP, CACHE, LOG, BAK, OLD, NEW, PART, DOWNLOAD, CRDOWNLOAD, LOCK or PID, you can use MasterCook or similar software from the "Recipe Ingredient Database" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert DEVICE, CACHE, SOCK, SYMLINK, PID, MOUNT, FIFO, LOG, PIPE, TMP, JUNCTION or TEMP files to ING, try MasterCook or another comparable tool in the "Recipe Ingredient Database" category.
The ING Converter Story
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our ING converter.