Reading blogs ( feeds ) inside outlook

Recently I have seen number of users reading my feed on outlook. Its been increasing month by month. So I thought there could be many more users who will be interested in reading feeds in outlook. The recent version of outlook, i.e outlook 2007 has feed reader built into it. Using which you can read the posts just like mails.
Reading feeds or posts inside outlook
This is useful as most of us, corporate users have outlook installed by default. You don't have to fight with your IS/ITS department for a new software or you don't have to keep your browser always open.
Your browser should recognize outlook 2007 as a feed reader when you access a feed. You can easily subscribe from there.
Susbscribe to RSS feed
If that is not happening, then you can go to
Tools -> account Settings -> RSS Feeds tab and click on new.
Manage your feeds
Enter the url of the feed to subscribe. Once the outlook finds the feed, it throws the settings. By default it would use your inbox to store the downloaded posts. Change it to external folder (pst) so your inbox is saved. You can set the enclosure download if the feed is of podcast. You can use the same menu for managing your feeds like changing the settings or for unsubscribing (remove).
Adding a feed using settings
You can also import or export set of feeds in the form of OPML. You need to go to File-> Import Export. This is useful if you want to import your feeds from GReader.
Import Export OPML
Like mails you can tag your feed posts, Flag them, Forward them, You can search, sort them or share the whole feed so other outlook users can easily add it to their subscription list.
Share feed in outlook
You can share the feeds with your friends. Go to any post and click on the share this feed button and enter the emails of your friends. Your friends will get a mail where it will have the feed details. Your friend has to click on "add this rss feed" button to subscribe to the feed.
add this rss feed
I have been using it for more than three months now. I must say I am impressed. But I make sure, I subscribe to only important feeds like that of my blog in outlook :) For the rest of the feeds I still go to GReader.

2 Responses

  1. Veera says:

    have tried it sometimes before, but using Outlook for reading feed is some how give me a ‘official’ feel. :P

  2. Sriram says:

    I made the mistake to import my OPML file into Microsoft Outlook 2007 and with several hundreds of feeds I found that there was no way to delete multiple feeds … :( any idea…