FeedDemon – Tools Menu (Panic Button)

The next tool in the list for us to review in FeedDemon is the Panic Button. If you are like me and you are easily overwhelmed by the number of unread items that may be in your FeedDemon folder list then you will really find great value in this tool. For some reason, probably because of all the time I spend on work and personal email, I feel that I have to read anything that is unread. Well as the Panic Button will tell you, you don’t have to read everything.

When you select the Panic Button from the tools menu it will launch a new window. The first thing you will notices, besides the big red picture of a button, is the number of unread items that you have in your subscriptions. The next thing you will probably notice is a heading that says “Mark as read” with a drop down box below it. If you select the drop down there is a list of options. The default is to have the Panic Button review items that are 48 hours old or older. However you will have a choice here of reviewing items that are either 24 hours old and older, 48 hours old and older, 5 days old or older and all items. I usually select the 24 hours or older because I like to read the recent news.

There is also an options button located on the bottom left of the Panic Button window. When you select this a new window will open. Within the new window there is an option to set the Panic Button to automatically run when you hit a certain number of unread items. You can enter any number from 1 to 9999. I have mine set to 300, which may even be to many, because once you get over 100 there will still be a lot of posts to read. Now that you have your options set, the Panic Button will run any time the number of your unread items exceeds the number in your Panic Button options.

So now there is just one thing left to do….Hit the Panic Button! When you Hit the Panic Button the current window will close and a progress window will open. This is a relatively quick process, like less then 30 seconds, and then the final window will open which tells you how many items were marked as read. When you click ok it will sync with NewsGator Online. You will notice that the number of unread items has changed in your folder tree. Remember that you are just marking these items as unread, you are not deleting them from your subscriptions folders. So if you wanted to you could still go back and read all the posts!

Next time we will continue reviewing items from the Tools Menu.