Excel Weekly Meal Planner With Recipe Selector

imageThe problem with putting a lovely red geranium on your table is that you can end up remodelling the kitchen! (Do you remember that magic geranium fable?)

Excel Weekly Meal Planner

Anyway, a while ago, I posted my Excel Weekly Meal Planner, which let you select meals for each weeknight, and print a grocery shopping list.

All was well in my kitchen, as I happily planned my meals with that useful workbook.

Then, JP from Code for Excel and Outlook, sent me a “geranium” — a copy of my Excel Christmas Planner, with a fancy new Excel Recipe Selector worksheet.

JP’s workbook has code that looks up recipes via web API, and returns the result to Excel.

Find a Recipe

For example, if you’re tired of steamed carrots, you can enter “Carrots” in the Recipes worksheet, and find more exotic recipes online.

Thanks JP! Your enhancement works great, and now it will be easy to spice up those holiday meals.

Find recipes for specific ingredient
Find recipes for specific ingredient

Remodelling the Excel Weekly Meal Planner

Yes, JP’s Recipe Selector makes the Holiday Dinner Planner better, but it made my Excel Weekly Meal Planner look shabby!

It needed a recipe selector too. In his blog post, JP showed the code for using the API, and had a link to another function that’s required.

Add a Recipes Sheet

So, I copied the Recipes sheet from JP’s workbook, and inserted it into my weekly meal planner file. It worked great in its new location, and I just had to change a couple of references in the code.

But…now the rest of the weekly meal planner looked a bit run down, so I decide to remodel it. After a couple of coats of paint, a new backsplash and a shiny new pivot table, it’s ready for the open house.

Get the Update Version

You can tour the remodelled version on the Excel Weekly Meal Planner page on the Contextures website, and download a copy to help plan your meals.

excelmealplan03

Watch the Excel Weekly Meal Planner Video

To see a quick overview of how the Excel Weekly Meal Planner works, you can watch this short video.

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4 thoughts on “Excel Weekly Meal Planner With Recipe Selector”

  1. I just downloaded your Weekly Meal Planner and have started adding my own meals. It is wonderful and I’m so excited to have found such a useful tool! I think I found a bug, though. When you select the same menu item twice (as you have done in your example with Ham steak), it doesn’t double the ingredients on the shopping list (it still only shows needing just 1 lb of Ham steak). My husband created a work-around for me, but it is not as nice as if it worked correctly in the first place. He copied the Qty column and then added a formula to your Qty column to multiply the copied Qty with the list column. This give the correct results. Anyway, thanks so much for a very useful Meal Planner!!

  2. I just downloaded it however I have 2003 instead of 2007 – I know, I’m an old breed. If I just open up the file in 2003 will it still work properly? I know that it opens but the shading appears to be gone. Is that the only thing that should not appear the same?

  3. Hi, I just found this planner and love it. It does everything I do on paper! I am not that good at using Excel and was wondering if you have a way of explaining the formulas? I’m trying to adjust the list for my use, but I keep getting errors. For example, if my recipe calls for 2 cloves of garlic, but in the list I have garlic listed as “pack”, since when I go to the store I buy a pack of garlic, not by the pound. How can I get it to show the right way on the sheet? Nor sure if I’m making sense. Also, if I have listed a “tub” of sour cream, but the recipe calls for 2 cups, (which is half a tub) how can I get that to properly show, so that the shopping list is accurate. Do I need to rename everything? And if so, do I need to break down my prices like, instead of a pack of garlic costing 1.98 and there are 8 bulbs in a pack, that makes each bulb roughly 25 cents. Even if I do that, it still won’t break down to cloves. Please help!

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