I’ve always been intimidated by the idea of putting together a recipe binder. I would love to gather all our family favorite recipes and put them into one easy-to-access cookbook, but it’s been hard to visualize how it should come together. Do I put the recipes in alphabetical order? Wouldn’t recipes by meal make more sense?
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Then it occurred to me that I don’t have to decide exactly how I’ll do it until I have it all organized on my computer first…on Microsoft OneNote to be precise. I know the big wig in the room is Evernote, but I have always used OneNote. I began using it when I got my first laptop back in college, and it was incredibly useful for organizing my notes for each class.
Now I use it for organizing my blog posts each month, taking note of goals I want to reach, and getting recipes together so one day I can print them all out and make a family recipe binder. I want my kids to each have their own recipe binder when they leave home, and I’m well on my way there.
How to Use Microsoft OneNote to Organize All Your Recipes
Even if you’ve never used OneNote, I’m sure you will love organizing your recipes this way. If you have Evernote instead, I am sure you can do the same thing there to make your own recipe binder. You can download both OneNote and Evernote for free, but I’m not sure if Evernote has the same capabilities as a paid version. OneNote even has a free recipe clipper you can download right here.
Step 1: Create a Notebook
When you start organizing your recipes in OneNote, you will want to create a new notebook. Click on File – New, and then you have a few choices about where you want access to this notebook: web, network, or my computer. I always just choose my computer because I am always at home working on it.
Now name your notebook. I used our last name and then Family Recipe Binder. The final step is to choose where you want to store this notebook.
Step 2: Create Folders (or Tabs)
After you have your new notebook all set up, you are ready to start creating folders. The easiest way to do that is to double click on the little tab that says “New Section 1” and type in the name of your first folder.
If you have decided you would like to try organizing alphabetically, you could name this folder A-D. Then when you have a recipe that you want to add that starts with a C, you add it to this folder. Just keep adding folders and naming them what you have decided you like. You add a folder by either clicking the little star symbol or right clicking and choosing “new section.”
I mostly organized my folders by type of meal and it has been great for me. I have Breakfast, Lunch, Snacks, Sides, Dinner, Sauces, Breads, Desserts and Treats, We’re Having Company, Seasonal, and Baby Food.
Step 3: Add Recipes
Now you’re ready to start adding recipes! If you make a lot of your recipes from things you see on Pinterest or other websites, this is going to be really easy. You can either add a recipe by taking a screen clipping or you can copy and paste the recipe. Either way, I always make sure I copy either the name of the blog/website where I got the recipe from or just copy the entire web address so I can go back if I need to.
Screen shot of recipe from a blog online
You can always include a picture in your screen shot for visual reference, but avoid using that picture for any other purpose. I rarely take a screen shot of the picture and put it with the recipe in OneNote because I figure I would have too much to live up to if I had a picture of the food I am making. 🙂
Recipe copied and pasted from a blog online
If you have a lot of recipes from cookbooks or magazines, you can scan those into your computer and add them straight to your OneNote notebook, or you could sit down and type them out yourself.
I love, love, love the fact that you can take notes about the recipe after you make it. You can say how great it was or what you would change for next time.
The great thing about organizing your recipes in OneNote before ever printing them out into a recipe binder is that you don’t waste money by printing out recipes, especially if they are ones you have never tried. I prefer to add the recipe, try it, make tweaks, and then if it’s a recipe that my family just didn’t really like, I can easily delete it. And you never know, your family’s food preferences could change over the years, and it would be as easy as adding and deleting recipes as you see fit.
How do you organize your recipes?
I’ve never heard of One Note, though evernote sounds familiar! I print out my recipes, then if they’re ‘keepers,’ I upload them on tastebook so they get printed into a cookbook.
Tastebook is new to me. I’ll have to check that out!
I love Evernote and use it for lists and the like but couldn’t use it for recipes since I’m a basic {free} user and only get 10 GB a month. A summer goal is to organize recipes and I remembered you had a post on it so here I am! Downloading now to computer and will likely get it on devices too! Thanks for the help Char!
Great! I hope it works for you. 🙂
Charlee,
Thank you for your information on Onenote. Like you I have always dreamed of creating my own cook book. I am going to try this, sounds so easy.
I’ve never used OneNote but my adult daughter living in another state has continued to encourage me to organize my recipes electronically so that she can access them. Could I share my recipes with her through OneNote?
I believe you can do that. I know there is an option when opening a new notebook to share it, but I’ve never personally done it. That would be a really great way to share recipes!
You can definitely share the entire notebook with your daughter. Follow Charlee’s instructions on creating and storing the notebook. Then open the notebook, click File in the top left of screen. Scroll down to “Share”. Click “share with people”. Then enter her email address and choose her level of access. The choices are “can edit” or “can view”. Include a message if you’d like and click “Share”. Microsoft will send her an email saying that you have shared with her.
NOTE: There are other ways but I think this is the easiest way.
I really like your idea. I currently have all mine mixed between three notebooks. It’s a mess flipping back and fourth through pages.. I was between a binder and digital. I’m really liking digital because I can share with my 3 daughters easier. I’ve used OneNote years ago.. seems simple enough! Hope I remember, lol. Thanks
I love this idea and have been looking for a user friendly way of organizing my recipes since they come to me in all varieties. Some are pinterest pins, texts from friends, screenshots, written down, magazines, etc. Do you put them in multiple catagories? If you have a ‘quick side’, do you enter it in ‘quick meals’ and ‘sides’, meaning you have to enter it twice?
It’s really up to you if you put one recipe in two different categories. There is a search function in OneNote, which makes it easy to find a recipe when you need it, but if you want to browse through your ‘quick meals’, for example, you’ll probably want the recipe in both categories.
I’ve been doing this for quite awhile. I also save the notebook to Microsoft cloud which allows me to access it on all of my devices. One of the best reasons for doing this is you have the ingredients list for any recipe available on your smartphone while grocery shopping! Oh and you mentioned manually copying the web address when cutting and pasting… OneNote automatically includes the origin url when you paste from a website. It’s at the bottom. Onetastic also has a number of macros that you can download and install to allow you to do sorting of tabs and pages, search for keywords, tags, etc.
I am really disappointed that Amazon no longer supports OneNote for it’s Kindles. I have found so many great uses for this app but I cannot use it on my kindle. I am really not happy about this!
I know — I’m a little behind the times and just getting started with One Note but I love its versatility. I’ll an Apple user and it’s so easy. Thanks for the hints and I’ll be back in touch.
Just discovered OneNote from your article on Pinterest. Just what I have needed for organizing all my recipes. Thank you for the suggestion.
I love OneNote! A third option to get recipes into OneNote is to print it directly into OneNote. It should come up in your list of available printers. When the window pops up, just choose the section you want it to print to.