How to transfer to a new Google Reader account including your starred items

Submitted by Brian Gilbert on July 4, 2009 - 12:08pm

Once I'd set up my Google Apps account I wanted to switch to using its reader instead of my old accounts one.

The thing that kept me with my old account however was my starred items, below is a method to switch and get your starred items as well:

First you will need to export your feeds from your old account, when you are logged in to your old reader account:

  • Select Settings, then Import/Export
  • Click the "Export your subscriptions as OPML file" link
  • Save the file somewhere you can find it

Now we need to share the Starred items:

  • Click Settings, then Folders and Tags
  • Tick the checkbox for "Your starred items"
  • Select "Public" from the "Change Sharing.." dropdown box
  • Click the "view public page" link that appears next to "Your starred items" row
  • Leave the public page open
  • Log out of your old reader account

Then we need to log into the new account and first import the exported OMPL file

  • Log in to your new reader account
  • Select Settings, then Import/Export
  • Click the "Browse" button to upload the file you saved earlier
  • Now your subscriptions are imported

Now to get the starred items into your new account:

  • Subscribe to the starred items feed from your old account, it's in the window that we left open earlier
  • In the subscriptions panel select ensure that your old starred items feed is selected
  • Cick the "all items" link in the view pane of reader
  • Start starring all of the items
  • Now you can unsubscribe from your old starred items feed as we don't need it anymore
  • Your starred items will still be be available even though you have unsubscribed from the feed

I know it's manual, but I had cose to 1000 starred items and it only took me about 5-10 minutes to re-star them in the new account, well worth it if you truly want to have everything in your apps account.

Tags: 
google
cloud

Comments

Submitted by Dan V Peterson on September 21, 2010 - 2:31pm.

Thanks a lot man. Just went through nearly 3000 starred items! Took quite a while but glad to finally be able to finish switching to the new account.

Submitted by Jeremy on September 8, 2010 - 5:03am.

Remember to start starring items from the bottom up so your new starred items list maintains the same ordering.

Submitted by Salgado on April 16, 2010 - 9:03pm.

I had to create a new account, and I have hundreds of starred items in my old account. Yes, like you say it's manual, but it's better than loosing them.

Great tip! Thanks!

Submitted by Reece on September 10, 2009 - 3:18am.

I'm finally getting around to manually merging two Google accounts. This was a huge help! Thank you!

P.S. Use n for next item, s to star. n,s,n,s,n,s,...

Submitted by J on August 1, 2009 - 8:30pm.

I found this useful. Cheers

Submitted by albioner on April 23, 2011 - 4:20am.

Thanks for this useful tip, especially since Google Apps accounts are being transitioned to the new infrastructure, and I can finally move my personal Reader account to one connected to my Apps account.
Just a couple quick notes to add:
- You lose the original date of the newly starred item.
- The date listed in the Starred items list is the date/time the item was *starred*, not the original date of he post. This means if you start 'starring' at the top of the list, the last item (of my 1400+ item list) now becomes the first item. Tip: start at the bottom and work up.

Submitted by Chad on May 21, 2011 - 7:31am.

Thanks for taking the time to give such a detailed description. I just finished transferring to my new reader account and your steps worked perfectly.

Submitted by Andreas Heissen... on June 1, 2011 - 9:14pm.

on mac I suggest to use this applescript to star the items automatically (copy past into applescript editor) if the first window in safari contains the list of your shared old acticles:
--- copy paste ---

tell application "Safari"
activate
repeat 170 times
tell application "System Events"
keystroke "s"
delay 1
keystroke "j"
delay 1
end tell
end repeat
end tell

---

on windows there are many free macro editor which allwo to loop the keys "s" "j"

Submitted by Andreas Heissen... on June 1, 2011 - 9:19pm.

change "j" to "k" if you want to keep the order - you have to start at the last article!

Submitted by lechatlisse on November 26, 2011 - 3:27pm.

this doesn't work anymore with the new google reader interface, any ideas on how to achieve the transfer of starred items now?

thanks in advance.