How To Backup Your RSS Subscription Feeds In Google Reader

If you are a fan of RSS, probably by now you have subscribed to a ton of feeds over time. Some of these feeds are sites that you can't live with out checking them on a daily basis (like Watching The Net Feed), or some that you read once or twice a week.

If you think about it, it's amazing how much RSS has simplified keeping tabs on the millions of Web sites, without needing to surf the Internet.

But if you really think about it, what would you do if you suddenly lost all your feed subscriptions? Imagine how much time it would take to re-subscribe to all those sites, if you could remember everyone of them.

Yuk.

Fortunately, if you use Google Reader, you can backup all your RSS subscriptions to a file, and easily restore them if a disaster occurred.

To save yourself from a pending disaster, or even when you accidentally unsubscribe (delete) from a feed, just logon to your Google account and open up Google Reader.

Next look in the left bottom navigation pane (where all your subscriptions are) and click on the Manage subscriptions link >>.

In the Settings menu, click on Import/Export.

At the bottom, click on Export your subscriptions as an OPML file and save the file somewhere on your Computer.

That's it!

If you need to restore your RSS subscription feeds, just go back to Import/Export again, browse to the location on your Computer for the saved XML file (from the Export), and click the Upload button.

When you Import:

• The previous Export will merge with any subscriptions, you have added after exporting (Import does not remove or delete).
• Can be used if you removed (delete) just one subscription or Tag and you want to restore (for example, you deleted something and can't remember what it was)
• Can be used to Import subscription feeds from other RSS readers. See How To Import Feeds for info.

To make it easier to back up your feeds in Google Reader, you can create a bookmark or even a shortcut on your desktop using the following URL:

http://www.google.com/reader/subscriptions/export

Now you have no excuse to backup you RSS subscription feeds, and continue to surf the Net the easy way.