Introduction: HOW TO CREATE a NUMERICAL AND/OR ALPHABETICAL LIST OF YOUR INSTRUCTABLES

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About: I am a 82-year-old self-proclaimed Chef who has spent most of his life in the hotel/resort tourism industry. I have traveled up and down the east coast of the United States from New York to Key West, and from …

After publishing 94 food-related instructables, I began to lose control of my recipes and felt that I needed a quick reference to my works, I tried opening a Windows word file and copying the recipe titles one-by-one from my Instructables Home Page, but that looked like it was going to take forever since each recipe came with a opening or introductory photo and option at the end of the title to edit, as well as a brief explanation similar to this: (WILD SALMON KABOBS WITH SWEET PEPPERS, PINEAPPLE, AND ZUCCHINI(edit)Made with wild salmon marinated in a blend of oils,spices, and lime juice, then sk posted on Dec 9, 2016 views: 270) . . .much more information than I needed to make a list. After experimenting with several ideas, I came up with the following solution. I hope that it will help you to organize your files (and, if you have a better of doing this, please let me know)!

Step 1: FIRST, YOU NEED TO GROUP ALL OF YOUR INSTRUCTABLES ON ONE PAGE . . .

If your system works like mine, this is already done for you:

  1. Sign in to the Instructables website.
  2. In the upper right hand corner of the page, click on "you," and then on "Instructables."
  3. That should bring up a page like the one in the second picture above.
  4. Place your cursor just to the right of the picture on the right side of the page (I had 5 pictures per line, so I clicked just to the right of the number 5 photo). *This should highlight the entire row.
  5. While still holding the shift key down, mover your cursor to the last photo at the of the page (in my case, photo #94). Doing so will hopefully highlight all of your instructable photographs that appear on that page.
  6. Right click on the last photo and a window should open that will give you several options (like open link in a new tab; copy link address, etc.). Click on "COPY.."

  • *NOTE: This was not an easy task to perform. I had to make several attempts to get the entire page of photos highlight all at one time. During several trials, I was able to do this sometimes by holding the shift key down and clicking just to the left of the 1st photo on the left - then moving the cursor to the right side of the page, and then down to the bottom. I performed this task several times; sometimes I could highlight all of the photos working from the left side of the page to the right, and then down to the last photo; sometimes I could do this working from the right side of the page. NO GUARANTEES!

Step 2: MOVE THE COPIED PHOTOS TO a *WINDOWS WORD FILE

I am still using Microsoft Windows 7 Word. I see no reason why you can't copy the files to an Excel file, or one of several other programs - probably Google Docs would work well, too.

  1. Open a blank Windows Word page (or a blank page in what every program you choose).
  2. Left Click and Paste.
  3. You should get pages that look like the 1st photo above: A picture of the first item on your instructables page followed by a brief description and a number (possibly even preceded or followed by a "dot.)
  4. Highlight (click on) the photo and "delete" it.
  5. Place your cursor to the right of any numbers and or dots and "backspace" (or highlight them and press delete). Either method should eliminate everything but the title that you wish to save an accumulate.
  6. Following the above procedure (#5) you can develop a rhythm and move rather rapidly down the page(s) until you have nothing but a list of the titles of your instructables. Then you can clean up the list and/or sort it to your satisfaction.

HOPE THIS WORKS FOR YOU!

Step 3: ALTERNATIVE METHOD FOR CREATING AN ALPHA-NUMERICAL LIST OF YOUR INSTRUCTBLES

This method will allow you to alphabetize your instructables before you copy them to a word or notebook sheet (this is actually the way I created my list, but it might take just a little longer):

  1. Sign in to Instructables
  2. Click on Instructables in the heading (see photo #1 above).
  3. Select the "Titles" viewing option; this will sort your instructables into an alphabetical order.
  4. Depending on how many instructables you have, this file maybe one or more pages long.
  5. Highlight the first item on the first page; then page or arrow down until you have highlighted all of the items on this page.
  6. Right click and "COPY" the highlighted items.
  7. Open a Windows Word page (or other document file) and "Paste" the copied files to that page.
  8. On the Word page, highlight individually each item that you want to delete (the word "featured" if it exists; the photo, the description, etc., and delete it, one at a time, until you have edited the 1st page and are left with just an alphabetical list of instructables.

You will have to repeat this process for each page of instructables that you have posted. While this may take a little longer than the first method described, you will eventually have a completely alphabetical list of your instructables in a word file; then you can sort them or number or edit them any way you want.