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Subscribing to RSS feeds with Thunderbird

Creating an RSS News & Blogs account

Before you can subscribe to any RSS feeds, you first need to create an RSS account. To do so:

  • From the "File" menu select "New" -> "Account". You can also go to the "Tools" menu and select "Account Settings", and click the "Add Account" button. (If using Thunderbird on the TerpConnect Linux image, use "Edit" -> "Account Settings".)
  • In the dialog box that pops up, select "RSS News & Blogs", press the "Next" button.
  • Enter an account name, press the "Next" button, then press the "Finish" button. The new account will then appear in the folders pane in the main Thunderbird window.

Note: if the option to create an RSS account does not appear, it is probably because you chose a "Custom" (rather than "Standard") install of Thunderbird, and you did not select to include RSS Support in your installation. In that case, you should uninstall Thunderbird and reinstall it, making sure to include the RSS option this time.


Subscribing to an RSS feed

To subscribe to a feed through the "RSS Subscriptions" dialog which can be accessed in any of these ways:

  1. Right-click (Ctrl-click on the Mac) on the account name in the folders pane and select "Manage Subscriptions".
  2. Click on the account name (created in the previous step) in the folders pane, then click the "Manage Subscriptions" link in the main Thunderbird window:

    Main account panel image

  3. Go to "Tools" -> "Account Settings", click on the account name in the left pane, and then click the "Manage Subscriptions" button.

Once you've brought up the "RSS Subscriptions" dialog:

Subscription image

click the "Add" button, enter the URL for the feed into the box, and click the "OK" button to subscribe to an RSS feed.

Properties image

After the feed is verified, it will then appear in the "RSS Subscriptions" dialog and in the folders pane under the account.

You can add more feeds under a single RSS account the same way; if you wish, you may create more than one "RSS News & Blogs" account, each with multiple subscribed feeds.

Other RSS settings

For each RSS account, there are some basic settings available through "Tools" -> "Account Settings" -> Account Name:

  • Check for new articles every ___ minutes
  • Check for new articles at startup
  • By default, show the article summary instead of loading the web page (for feeds that make a summary available).

For each subscribed RSS feed:

  • To have the articles for a feed stored in the same folder as the articles for another feed: open the "RSS Subscriptions" dialog, select the feed you want to change, click the "Edit" button, then use the drop-down list to change the destination folder.
  • To rename a feed: right-click (Ctrl-click on the Mac) on the folder in the folders pane and select "Rename Folder". This can also be done by selecting the folder and going to "File" -> "Rename Folder", then typing in the new name.
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