How to Import Data from RSS or ATOM Feeds in Google Sheets

September 10th, 2023

In today's digital era, RSS and ATOM feeds provide constant updates from various websites, be it news outlets, blogs, or podcasts. While these feeds are typically read using specific feed readers or integrated into websites, did you know that you can directly import data from RSS or ATOM feeds into Google Sheets? This opens up a plethora of opportunities for data analysis and visualization. In this article, we'll guide you through the process.

1. Using `IMPORTFEED`

The IMPORTFEED function is specially designed to fetch data from RSS or ATOM feeds. With this function, you can pull in feed titles, authors, dates, and descriptions.

Example: To import the latest five headlines from a news website's RSS feed, you would use:

=IMPORTFEED("https://www.newswebsite.com/rss", "items title", FALSE, 5)

2. Extracting Specific Feed Data

By default, IMPORTFEED will fetch the feed's title and URL. However, you can specify other parameters such as "items title" or "items description" to fetch more data.

Example: To get the descriptions of the latest five articles:

=IMPORTFEED("https://www.newswebsite.com/rss", "items description", FALSE, 5)

3. Regularly Updating Feed Data

One of the inherent benefits of using RSS or ATOM feeds in Google Sheets is that the data is continually updated. This means that your sheets can reflect the most recent posts or news from your chosen feeds without any manual updates.

4. Combine with Other Functions

Combining IMPORTFEED with other Google Sheets functions, like QUERY, can allow you to filter, sort, and manipulate the imported data as per your requirements.

Example: To fetch the titles of the latest five articles and arrange them in reverse order:

=QUERY(IMPORTFEED("https://www.newswebsite.com/rss", "items title", FALSE, 5), "SELECT Col1 ORDER BY Col1 DESC")

Conclusion