Background: For years my family's recipes were scattered across old recipe cards, screenshots on my phone, and a couple of half-finished Word docs from my mom. Every holiday I'd promise myself I'd organize them into something real, and every year it stayed a mess.

Attempts: I tried InDesign templates first, but I don't have design skills and it took forever just to get consistent formatting. Then I tried a generic PDF-merge tool, which just stitched the files together without any real layout - still looked like a pile of scanned pages, not a cookbook.

Final approach: I ended up using a tool that let me turn recipes into a cookbook by uploading the PDFs, Word docs, and photos directly. It kept the original recipe text and instructions unchanged, but automatically sorted everything by category (appetizers, mains, desserts) and handled the layout and photo placement. I still had to tweak a few pages manually, but it was way faster than doing it by hand, and I could export a print-ready version at the end.

Open question: Has anyone else gone through the process of digitizing old family recipes? Curious what tools or workflows worked for you, especially for handwritten cards that need retyping.

Last edited by bookletai_24372 (Today 3:21 am)