How to import starred items from Google Reader

So, I have moved to Newsblur now that Google Reader is out of the picture, I easily found all the sites I subscribe to without linking to my Google account (seems silly to use that to get all my feeds when it is going away in a month). I exported all my Reader info using Takeout, but am now stuck on the one thing I exported that data for - I want to keep the individual items I starred in Reader. I have the json file with that info, but I do not see a way to import that file into Newsblur in any way.

Having never migrated rss feed info, or having used Takeout for that matter, I just don’t know how it all works. Any help would be welcomed!

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Manage > Import will do it for you.

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When I go to Manage > Import, the Upload.Starred JSON button is Greyed out.

Same. My button is greyed out as well when I try to use UPLOAD STARRED.JSON

So when Reader’s API died, so did the starred story import. It’s going to be a few days until I get around to writing the starred story upload. I’ll let you know when I do. Your stories will be safe.

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Very excited to finally get my starred stories imported!

I have my starred.json all ready to go.

Please post to this thread when the importer is ready so that I’ll know…I can’t wait to use it!

Thank you very much.

Samuel,

Thank you for your replies on this topic earlier this year.

Will you let us know if you are still planning on adding the starred story import for those of us that have been holding onto our Google Takeout files for this purpose?

I know that I have been without them for months, like we all have, but I have years of starred stories from Google Reader that I would really like to preserve and access.

Will you give us an update on this feature?

Thank you.

while i was lucky enough to have imported my starred stories before reader died, i have saved several stories via newsblur since then. i would love if there were some sort of saved item json or OPML export, so i could have an independent backup of all this data. this might merit its own post.

You can export your shared stories quite easily though the API: www.newsblur.com/api. As for building this feature, I plan to do it at some point, but there’s very few people who have yet to import their saved stories.

cool, i’ll look into the API! thanks.

I signed up for Newsblur but have been unable to use it because I can’t import my starred JSON from Google Reader. I don’t have the time to recreate everything from scratch as there was too much information already in Reader.

Please consider that there might be others like me who need a service but can’t even consider signing up because they have no way to migrate.

westes, thanks for your +1. It’s good to hear from another person who wants the starred story import feature added. I love Newsblur, but I really miss all of my old starred stories.

Just popping in to add that while I did import my starred stories, I was only able to import half of my starred stories - I had 2000-3000ish starred stories when Reader went down.

So having imported some stories doesn’t mean we got everything :slight_smile:

MattDarling, thanks for letting us know. I’m not sure how many stories I had starred when Reader ended, but I would take any percentage of them over 0%.

I had two accounts on GReader and got more than 50MB sized starred.json file.
I was looking to hire someone on fiverr to code an export/import script but go no response.

Hi kephale. I had no idea that the size of one’s starred.json file would be an issue. Did you get an error saying that your file was too large?

You definitely would get an error if you tried to upload that here. I only support file uploads of up to 2MB. You can cut it up yourself, if you know what to look for. As for finishing this feature, I plan to build it, since it wouldn’t be too hard. But it takes a while to build, since it has an email component, a background task, and some necessary testing for handling strange stories.

Manage > Import, the Upload.Starred JSON button is Greyed out today. Why is it so ? BTW my StarredJSON file is 14 mb… too big ? Thanks

Any follow up on this?

Yes, I still care about this, too. Samuel, are you still planning on adding this feature?