This tutorial shows how to use a Google Docs spreadsheet as an RSS Feed reader (see example). You can aggregate news feeds from different sources into one spreadsheet (similar to alltop or popurls or addictomatic) and then publish it as a web page.
If you have a blog, you can use the same trick to embed RSS feeds in web pages. The Google Docs approach is preferred over Flash or Javascript widgets because here you have complete control over the presentation layout and formatting of content.
So before we get started, let’s look at a real example. The following Google Docs snippet shows live feed data from some top technology blogs.
Here are the complete step involved for putting RSS feeds into Google Docs. We use a single feed in the example but you can extend the idea for any number of feeds.
1. Open a new spreadsheets and type the URL of any web feed in cell, say A1.
2. In cell A2, type =ImportFeed(A1, “Items Title”, FALSE, 10) – This will fill column A with the titles of the latest 10 stories in that feed.
3. In cell B2, type =ImportFeed(A1, “Items URL”, FALSE, 10) – This will fill column B with the URL (permalink) of the corresponding stories in column A.
4. In cell C2, type HyperLink(B2, A2) – This will combine the title and URL to make a clickable link that will be available when you publish the sheet as a web page.
5. Copy paste the contents of cell C2 in C3 until C11.
You can experiment with different fonts, colors, sizes, etc. Now go to Publish –> More publishing options, type C2:C13 in the range and get the HTML embed code.
Google Docs will automatically refresh content when the underlying RSS feeds are changed. Here’s a quick walkthrough in video:
If you enjoyed reading this, you may like to know about tracking Google Docs visitors or how to compare text files with Google Docs.
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/office/use-google-docs-spreadsheet-as-rss-reader-feed-aggregator/3527/
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
So does this work only in spreadsheets or docs as well?
Written by Angad Singh on 06.11.08
wow.. This sounds a really simple and cool idea !! Thanks a lot for this great find ! Appreciate it very much !
Written by shivaas on 06.11.08
i love the tutorial, many thanks! hey what screenscast software do you use? it looks fantastic!
Written by booyaa on 06.11.08
Amit, it does work actually. I just tired to evoke my rss in for a test. Publish it as a web page rings a bell for one new great idea … have you thought of it?, I reckon google have. r
Written by Wood Fired Pizza on 06.11.08
just in spreadsheets…
Take this data and hook it up to a “word Cloud Spreadsheet Gadget (see “Insert / Gadget”) to see the trendy things across these (or other) topical blogs…
for more fun, try =importXML() - which let’s you pull (for example) all the image URLs from a blog or site… if you know xPath queries…
Then, write a custom spreadsheet gadget which displays those images on your iGoogle page…
Oh, the places you’ll go… ;)
Written by JR on 06.11.08
I am doing reverse, reading google docs through RSS feeds.
Written by Vicky on 06.11.08
When I try to fetch item url’s in Column B, it says ‘Parse error’…what can be the reason?
Written by Ganesh on 06.12.08
Ganesh,
When I copied and pasted the text, it put in smart quotes…need to change those to regular quotes and then it worked beautifully.
Written by Chris on 06.12.08
Wow! This is a great idea! I might have to (in time) use this on my site! Right now its pretty basic but with it “auto refresh” feature, that would be great! Thanks alot for the info!!
Written by Torova on 06.12.08
Is there a way I can filter from another spreadsheet? For example, if I have a RSS feed from TVRSS.net (a RSS feed for bittorrent TV shows), but I only want to have specific shows as a result in the feed. Can I use Sheet2 to create a list of shows I want, then filter my feed based on that?
Written by Ryan on 06.12.08
Does anyone know how to display the NUMBER of posts instead of actual posts?
Written by Spiro on 06.12.08
great idea. I never really thought of it this way - but it would sure work.
Written by matt on 06.13.08
Me thinks there needs to be an equals sign before the Hyperlink attribute in 4).
And a question: Is there any way to remove the footer with the Base URL?
Written by Matthew Carrick on 06.13.08
I’ve just tried with regular quotes and it says Parse error… any solution?
Written by Pachecus on 06.13.08
hmm.. when i put the code into A2, (copy/paste or type it out) i get #VALUE. doesn’t seem to work for some reason.
Written by langley on 06.17.08
Or… You could just use Google Reader. I believe that docs and reader are next to each other. Why make something needlessly complex?
Written by Dan on 06.27.08
Pretty neat. I personally use Google Reader as my feed reader, but it could be a cool way of sharing feed items on a web page. I’m considering this for my blog.
Written by Blake on 07.12.08
Neat trick! I tried displaying the description in another cell and got an error. I used =ImportFeed(A1,”Items Description”,FALSE, 10) What went wrong?
Written by Jason on 09.29.08
Don’t copy and past the text into cells. For some reason, it gives parse errors. Just type in the text instead and it should work.
Written by john d on 10.08.08