Working with IE7 Feeds in Vista and XP « Nathan Scott, Left-handed Geek

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12-01-2007 UPDATE
I’ve got to be honest: I barely use SyncToy nowadays, so I can’t be sure if this is any good. However, I will keep this post around for anyone looking for any odd information that might be found here… Also, I somehow failed to explain that Internet Explorer 7 can’t be running when you’re updating the feeds via SyncToy; If you try to update, delete, or rename any files in IE7’s Feeds folder while IE is running, you’ll quickly be prompted with a message saying that it is being used by another person or program.

(I’ve also updated some oddities in my wording, as well as a bad link…)

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I’ve been doing this for a while, and figured that someone might find it useful… If you’ve been using multiple computers with IE7 and RSS Feeds, you may have found it annoying to switch computers and constantly have to re-read feeds that you’ve read elsewhere. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to keep the Feeds in sync? How about just managing the Feeds from explorer? Or do you want to transfer the Feeds from your old computer to your new computer? Perhaps you Feeds aren’t working anymore? Well, if you need any of those questions answered then you’re in luck!

Mind you, I don’t use any other aggregator so I can’t comment on anything else.

Disclaimer: I must emphasize that I don’t know IE7 extensively and I can only explain what I know and have done. This is all based off of my personal experience, so your milage may vary.

Where are my Feeds stored?

Here’s the XP location:

\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Feeds

And here’s the Vista location:

\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Feeds

Note: if you just copy and paste the link in Windows Explorer or IE7 it’ll automatically go to the current user’s folder, respectively.

You can manage the feed folders from explorer, if you so desire, but just note that all folders end with a tilde (~), IE7 won’t recognize any folder without one, so just keep the tildes.

How do I make a backup of my Feeds?

If you want to create an OPML file, in the instance that you want to give a list of your Feeds to a friend, here’s what you can do:

With IE7 open (as it should be now), you can press ALT on your keyboard and select File, and select “Import and Export…”

From here you can (go figure) import and export your Favorites, Feeds or Cookies. Select “Export Feeds” and proceed through the next few steps. This will create a file that you can import elsewhere–be it IE7 or any RSS aggregator that supports OPML files.

Importing files is much the same way, except for some strange reason you have to select “Import Feeds”.

My Feeds don’t sync automatically, can you help?

I had this problem when I upgraded from a beta build of IE7 to the final (RTM), and I think it was mostly due to me manually stopping the msfeedsstore.exe file from task manager.

You can check out this blog post from the RSS team, which explains how to ensure that the msfeedsstore.exe file is working (the program responsible for updating the Feeds). I went through those steps but it didn’t help me.

Now would be a good time for me to suggest that you back up your Feeds folder, along with everything on your computer, portable hard drives, driveway, etc. before attempting this sync. I am not responsible for any harm that occurs to you or your computer, files, folders, family, pets, Sims, action figures, etc.

If you navigate to the above mentioned folder, you will see a file called FeedsStore.feedsdb-ms (it might just be called “FeedsStore” with a file type of “FEEDSDB-MS”).

Just rename or delete this file, restart IE7 and right-click any feeds file in IE7 and select “Refresh All”, and this should bring things back to normal.

Now for the good stuff:

How do I sync my Feeds between different computers?

I’ve been using Windows Vista since last June, and while I was mostly using XP, I was constantly updating my Feeds, adding new Feeds, removing old Feeds, and I was getting frustrated because it was becoming a mess and I wasn’t spending my time productively. I discovered how to set up this neat little too from Microsoft called SyncToy, which really helps me out.

You can download SyncToy from here.

This works for both Vista and XP, although you may have to download the .NET 2.0 update…

Because there are too many different scenarios, I can’t explain how to do everything, so I’ll stick to what would be the best for most people…

If you have a USB drive that has between 50MB and 256MB, you can set up a simple folder sync between your computer and the USB drive. This will let you keep your Feeds with you wherever you go, and allow you to keep things sync’d between potentially dozens of computers. This requires you to manually sync the files, but it’s a minor inconvenience versus the constant headache of messy Feeds…

With SyncToy running create a new folder pair by clicking on the “Create New Folder Pair” button.

When prompted to choose the “left folder”, paste the following, respectively:

For Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Feeds
For Windows Vista: C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Feeds

NOTE: You’ll need to replace %username% with your username. Also you may need to change C:, depending on your settings.

Then choose where you’ll be putting the Feeds on your USB drive.

I created a new folder called “Feeds”.

Then select Synchronize, which will allow changes to be 2-way (if you add a new feed on another computer, it will modify the changes on the USB drive). If you’re curious about the different modes just click “More Information…”