FeedDemon – Importing

Since today’s post is about Importing it probably should have been one of the first post. However in this particular series it seems to fit best as one of the follow up postings.

Anyway Importing feeds can serve as a valuable tool. When you first setup FeedDemon you can use the import function to pull in all of your feeds. This is especially helpful if you are transferring from an online service or if you are moving from a different desktop application. The first step in Importing is to activate the Import Wizard. In order to do this simply click on File, and then import feeds which is the second option following Subscribe (see FeedDemon-File Menu from May 10, 2009 for more info). Once the Wizard opens you will have 3 options.

The first option for importing is to Import Recommended Feeds. When you select this item from the list and click next, the new window will have a list of folders that are separated by topic, such as Business, Gossip, Games, Science, etc. You will also notice that there are two buttons on the top right, one to select ‘All’ and one to select ‘none’. The folders that will be in the center box allow you to select the whole folder or you can expand each folder to see the selection of feeds in each folder. You can also select feed by feed which ones you want to add. There is also a button on the bottom right that launches a new window that provides a preview of the feed that you have selected in the folder list. After you select the feeds that you want to add click next. The following window allows you to determine which folder you want to put your new feeds. There are two options here as well. You can either recreate the folder structure from the previous wizard window in your folder tree or you can put all of the posts that you selected into one (and only one) of your existing folders. Once you choose simply pick next and you will come to the finish screen. When you select Finish your new feeds will be added to your folder tree (aka Subscriptions).

The next option is to import your feeds from an OPML file. Basically this is a file on your hard drive that you have exported from another program or service. You will need to click on the second radio button to activate this option. Then if you know the location of the file on your computer you can type in the path, otherwise select the folder at the end of the box (right side). This is the browse button and you can search for the file in your computer. Once you find it click open. Then click next. The new screen will present you with a list of all the folders and feeds available in the file. You can select which folders and feeds that you would like to added. You will also notices the buttons ‘All’ and ‘None’ on the top right. Like before these will select all or remove all the selections that you have made. When you click next you will find the Destination folder screen again. You can either add all the new feeds to a single existing folder or you can maintain the folder structure that is present in the OPML file. When you have chosen the option you want to use, click Next which will bring up the Finish screen. Click finish and FeedDemon will load all of your newly imported feeds and create any folders that you told it to create.

The last option to import feeds is to import from another service directly. This would be like importing from Bloglines or RSS Bandit. When you select a service (like Bloglines) from the drop down list and click Next, FeedDemon will ask you for the login and password. Then it will automatically go out and retrieve all of your feeds from that service. As with the other importing options you can choose which feeds you want to import. Once you have chosen the feeds simply click next. Also as before you will be asked which folder you want to put these feeds in or if you want to import the folders that were present in the source, in this case Bloglines. Once you have chosen where they should go simply click Next and then Finish. The new feed will be added to your list in the location that you specified.

Next time we will look at Exporting your feeds for use in another tool or better yet on another computer.