Eleanor from Ohio writes: I have a Windows XP. How do I copy a recipe from Facebook without copying a whole lot of pages? Thank you Eleanor.
Well Eleanor, if you’re like me, your Facebook feed is filling up with photos of tempting photos of food with recipes in the caption. That’s a real problem when I’m checking it late at night. Is 11 p.m. too late to start cooking with canned biscuit dough?
If you try to save or print an entire Facebook page, you’ll end up with a lot of stuff you don’t want. Here’s how to do it.
Say you want to save a recipe for Crock Pot Orange Chicken. Here’s what it probably looks like.
Make sure the entire recipe is visible. In this case, we need to click on See More to see everything.
Using your mouse, left- click just before the first letter of the text you want to copy. Hold down the Shift key on your keyboard and then left-click again after the last letter you wish to copy. The entire recipe should appear to be highlighted. Now hold the Ctrl key on the lower left of your keyboard and press the C key. Ctrl + C = Copy (a handy shortcut to know). You could also right-click with your mouse and choose Copy from the menu that pops up.
Now you’ll need someplace to paste your recipe. Open a word processing program such as Word or Word Pad and make a new document. Click in the document and press the Ctrl key and then V key. Ctrl + V = Paste. You could also right-click on your mouse and choose Paste from the menu that pops up. Your copied text should now appear in your document.
Now, save that document with the title of the recipe. I save all of the recipes I find online this way, whether it’s on Facebook or another website. I have a folder just for recipes. For often-used recipes, I print them off and keep them in a binder in plastic sleeves. That way they don’t get messy when I’m cooking.
A great thing about saving the text in a new document is that you can control the size. Say you think this recipe is hard to read. Just highlight all of your text (Click and hold Shift as before or select Ctrl key and the A key to Select All) and change the size.
And now you have large easy-to-ready text.
I have also seen recipes that were incorporated into pictures like this:
In that case, double-click on the photo to open it and then right-click with your mouse. Choose Save Image from the menu that pops up and save it to the desired location.
Happy cooking! Hope that helps.
~ Cynthia
An easier way is to send yourself an email.
Highlight the recipe as above, then hit Edit, and Copy
In the email just hit Paste then Send. You can make a separate folder
in your email program just for Recipes.
This worked perfectly and copies the whole recipe and picture when highlighted.
I do not have word. Can I print them right from facebook? How? Help
Connie – If you print directly from Facebook, you’re going to just get a picture of your Facebook feed. You don’t necessarily have to have Word. You could use Word Pad or even Google Docs online. Or you could copy the text in an e-mail – send it to yourself and then print.
I was so excited to see your blog but again it failed on me. I have tried this for months. I put the mouse before the first word and then after the last letter I want to copy. The entire recipe then highlights. When I go to word and then try to paste it it only shows the first part of the recipe that you usually only see before you read on “see more.” Do you know what I could be doing wrong? I have Vista on my computer.
One thing you can try is to copy the text in the recipe a paragraph at a time instead of the whole post.
I have the same problem as Cheryl S. Trying to copy a paragraph at a time doesn’t work either. I’m using windows 8.
Are you highlighting and hitting copy with cursor in the blue.
This also works for copying text from a fb newsfeed. Thanks for recommending the Control-C shortcut. On my pc (Linux w/ Firefox, both a little old) I can highlight the text, but, the copy function is grayed out. Contkrol-C works just fine, however. You just improved my life, a little bit. Little bits add up. Thanks, again.
I have done the above and when I go to ‘print’ the recipe, it will only print the first 3 or so lines. What I do now is a pain. I screen print, paste, crop, Text wrap, make larger to be able to see words. Maybe not in this order but close.
Thx Janet
I am having the same problem. It only copies a few lines of the recipe.
You must paste special to get it all and then choose the text only or third paste option. This works everytime.
yay, finally figured it out. Thanks Brenda!
Dish Dish (dishdish.us) offers a Recipe Import Tool that you can use to highlight the text from any recipe online and then use the import tool to save the recipe to your online cookbook account with them (they have a free account – but the pro account lets you use the import tool and is about $20/year). It’s an easy tool to use, and then whenever you want to find the recipe, you log into your Dish Dish account and can see all the recipes you’ve saved in your “cookbook”. Hope this will help some!
Cookpanion is an app people can use to save and share recipes on Facebook in a really easy-to-use format. It lets you add, save, bookmark, and discover recipes for free.
There’s also an app for business pages that gives more features for foodbloggers, food brands, CPGs and more.