How to transfer to a new Google Reader account including your starred items
Posted by: Brian Gilbert | Filed under: google
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.

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