Google Reader is perhaps the best RSS feed reader out there that consolidates all of our RSS subscriptions. Microsoft Outlook comes with an inbuilt RSS Reader that downloads all your feed items to Outlook so that you can read your feeds offline since the data is now stored in your local disk.
Now, if you still want to rely on Google Reader (like me) then you can access your Google Reader feeds right from your Outlook. All you need to do is right-click the “RSS Feeds” folder in Outlook and click “Properties”.
Now, navigate to “Home Page” tab and enter the URL http://www.google.com/reader/ in the address field and check the option “Show home page by default for this folder“.
You will be prompted to login to your Google account when you click on “RSS Feeds” in Outlook. Just login using your Google account and password (no application specific password required).
The real advantage of using this method is that you don’t have to manage your feed items again as everything is still synced via Google Reader. Now the disadvantage is that you can’t read your feeds offline and all links from Outlook will open on Internet Explorer even if your default browser is a Chrome or a Firefox.
But, if you want to read your feeds by downloading them and make them available offline too, then you need to follow this method.
Go to Google Reader and open “Reader settings”.
And navigate to “Import/Export” tab.
There you can export all your Google Reader subscriptions as an OPML format.
Now click on “download” and save the OPML file to your local disk.
Open “Microsoft Outlook” and right-click “RSS Feeds” and click on “Import an OPML File…”.
Browse your local files and choose the OPML file which you have exported from Google Reader Settings and click “Next”.
Outlook shows all the RSS Feeds and you need to select the Feeds which you want to import to Outlook or you can “Select All” if you want to import all the RSS subscriptions.
Click “Next” and then click “Finish”. You’re all set to go now!
You can now read your RSS feeds online/offline from your Outlook by clicking “RSS Feeds”. The only problem is that your Outlook feeds are not synced with Google Reader.
