Export a nutrition plan to PDF

Export a client's diet to PDF when you want something you can print and stick on the kitchen wall, take to the shop or hand over on paper. The file is made to be read in black and white on any printer: no colours to decode, and the amounts clearly visible.

The PDF is a copy of the plan at the moment you export it. Later changes in TrainerStudio do not update that copy.

What can be exported

The action depends on how you gave that client their diet:

Form of the diet	What you get
Written menu	A PDF laid out from the menu you wrote, keeping its headings, paragraphs and lists.
Advanced nutrition	A PDF with the days of the plan, their meals, the foods and recipes with their amounts, the alternatives and, if you want, calories and macros.
Uploaded PDF	Nothing to generate: the file already is a PDF. The button opens and downloads it as it is, without converting or re-laying it out.

Where to find the action

On the client's profile → Nutrition tab, above the plan:

Written menu: the Export nutrition plan button in the top bar.
Uploaded PDF: the Download PDF button, which opens the file you uploaded.
Advanced nutrition: the View → Export menu.

On small screens the buttons show only their icon; the action is the same.

The export dialog

The Export nutrition plan dialog has two panels: options on the left, Preview on the right. On mobile it fills the screen and the preview appears below the options.

The preview shows the real pages of the PDF you are about to download (up to 12; if the file has more, it says how many extra pages there are). It regenerates itself every time you change an option.

If the plan is still empty, the preview says so and the download button stays disabled. If the file cannot be prepared, a Try again button appears.

The two layouts

With advanced nutrition you choose the layout under Layout:

Layout	What it looks like
Detailed	One day per page, with ingredients and quantities. Each day starts on a new page, with its meals as sections and a table per meal. It includes each recipe's ingredients and steps. This is the default.
Compact	The whole plan in fewer pages, one line per food. Days flow one after another and each meal takes a row with its foods summarised. No ingredients or recipe steps.

Detailed is the one you cook from; Compact is the one that ends up on the fridge.

With a written menu there are no layouts: it is a single flowing document and is laid out one way only.

Period and content

When you open the export from the advanced planner, under Period you choose between:

Complete plan — every day of the plan.
Current week — the seven days of the week you are looking at.

Under Content, the Show calories and macros checkbox is ticked. Unticked, the file keeps only the foods and their amounts: a clean list for the shop or the fridge, with no numbers in the way.

What the file contains

Content	How it appears
Cover	Plan name, client, number of days, period and coach, plus the plan description. If you set macro targets, they appear next to the plan's real daily average.
Days	Numbered Day 1, Day 2… together with the name you gave them (for example, "Training day"). Days without meals take no pages.
Meals	Each meal is a section with its name (Breakfast, Lunch…), its notes and its calorie total.
Foods and recipes	With order codes (A, B, C…), the amount in grams or servings, and the provenance (brand or food database, "Recipe" and the preparation time).
Alternatives	Under the heading you wrote (or "Or instead") as secondary rows, so it is clear they are equivalents and not extra meals.
Ingredients and steps	In the Detailed layout, recipes show their ingredients with the amount already scaled to the servings in the plan, and their instructions.
Calories and macros	kcal, P, C and F columns per food, a total per meal and a total per day, when you leave the checkbox ticked.

Each page footer shows the client, the coach and the page number.

A written menu becomes a document made for paper:

Headings, paragraphs, bulleted and numbered lists, quotes and separators are kept.
Images you pasted are included, up to twelve. If one cannot be included, the PDF itself says so at the end.
Tables are printed row by row, with cells separated by dots, so no data is lost.
Inline formatting (bold, colours, underlines and links) is not carried over: the PDF is black and white and puts legibility first.

On the web: press Download PDF. You will see the "File downloaded" notice and the dialog closes. Look for the file in your browser's download list.
In the iOS or Android app: press Share PDF and pick an app or a saving option in the system share sheet.

The button is disabled while the preview is being prepared and when the plan has no meals. Cancel closes the dialog without exporting. The file is not sent to the client automatically: you decide how to deliver it.

Limits and common questions

Why does my uploaded PDF not open the export dialog?
Because there is nothing to generate. That file already is a PDF of yours, and converting it again could only make it worse. The Download PDF button gives you exactly the file you uploaded.

Do all recipes show their ingredients?
Recipes are resolved against your library when you export. If a recipe is not available at that moment, the food still appears with its name, amount and macros, but without the ingredient breakdown. On very large plans, the export resolves up to sixty distinct recipes.

Is a shopping list included?
No. The PDF reproduces the plan by days and meals; it does not add amounts up across days.

Are changes I am still editing included?
The export waits for any save in progress to finish before reading the plan. Even so, if you keep editing after downloading, export again to get an up-to-date copy.

Can I export offline?
No. You need a connection to read the plan and resolve the recipes. Once saved, the file opens without TrainerStudio.

What do I do if the export fails?
Check your connection and press Try again. If the plan is very long, export one week instead of the complete plan.