Excel Tip #10: Use Excel as an RSS Feed Reader
If you don’t like using any of the available RSS feed readers to get updates from your favorite blogs and websites, you can use an Excel spreadsheet to generate an RSS feed.
To create an RSS feed in your spreadsheet:
- Go to your favorite website and look for the RSS icon or link. Usually this is an orange icon with three semi-circles forming what looks like a cone. Right click the link, and select Copy Link location.
- Open Excel, and on the Developer tab, click the Source button in the XML group.
- Click the XML Maps… button at the bottom of the XML Source window.
- Click the Add… button in the XML Maps window.
- Paste the RSS feed link you copied from the website earlier into the File name box, and click Open.
- If a message appears regarding the XML source not referring to a schema, click OK.
- Click OK to close the XML Map window.
- In the XML Source window, find the Item folder and click on it to select it.
- Drag the Item heading to a cell in your worksheet. This will create a table with the headings from the Item section in the XML Source window.
- To populate the RSS Feed, right click on a cell below the headings and click Refresh.
What other Excel tips can you think of?