Thunderbird 1.0 OPML Import/Export

By Dougal | Published: January 3, 2005
Thunderbird OPML Import/Export

Thunderbird OPML Import/Export

Aha! I was digging around some more, and thought I’d see if there was any kind of official movement on OPML import for Thunderbird. So I wandered over to the Mozilla bug tracker, and did a search for “OPML” in the “Thunderbird” project. That turned up a single hit, which was Bug #258102. Towards the bottom, were some patches from Justin.

At first, I wasn’t sure how to apply them. His patch touches a file named “subscriptions.js”, which I couldn’t find in my Thunderbird installation. But then I realized that it was packed up in a .jar file. I unpacked the ‘newsblog.jar’ file (it’s just a .zip by another name), applied the patch, repacked the jar, dropped it back into my Thunderbird installation, and voila!

This still needs some work, it is alpha quality at best. Proceed at your own risk. Here there be dragons. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball. The imported feeds will all be under your main feeds folder, it will not auto-create subfolders for you. The feeds will get imported, but don’t show up in the list when you “Manage Subscriptions”. On a similar note, only your manually added feeds will get exported. I’m sure that these bugs will be fixed at some point. Update: this appears to be a problem on my laptop installation of Thunderbird 1.0. It works better on my Debian Linux install of Thunderbird 0.8 at work.

If the above problems don’t bother you too much, and you just want to get a bunch of feeds imported now, here’s what to do:

  1. Exit Thunderbird
  2. Download my patched copy of newsblog.jar
  3. Find the original newsblog.jar file for your installation, rename it (e.g. ‘newsblog.jar.orig’), and put the new version in its place. Under a standard Windows installation, it should be under “Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\chrome”. Under Linux/FreeBSD, try something like “/usr/share/mozilla-thunderbird/chrome”
  4. Restart Thunderbird, and go to the “Manage Subscriptions” option of your News & Blogs folder to see your shiny new OPML buttons!

Note: I did not write the OPML import code. All I can take credit for is bringing it to your attention. All kudos belong to Justin Kirby (hey look, another WordPress blog :) ), as far as I can tell.

Stumble It!
Thunderbird 1.0 OPML Import/Export

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24 Comments

  1. M
    Posted January 20, 2005 at 10:57 pm | Permalink

    Works like a charm in 1.0 on windoze! Thanks, was looking for this.

    Reply
  2. Christopher Carfi socialcustomer.typepad.com
    Posted January 27, 2005 at 6:37 pm | Permalink

    Heh. “Do not taunt the Happy Fun Ball.” Damn…I haven’t thought of that in years.

    Oooh! The doorbell!!! I wonder if that’s my new Bass-O-Matic?

    Reply
  3. Dan Semaya semaya.net
    Posted February 7, 2005 at 12:15 pm | Permalink

    This works on Mac OS X. The newsblog.jar file that you need to replace is inside the Thunderbird application bundle. To get to it, control-click (or right click) on the Thunderbird icon in the Applications folder, select “Show Package Contents” and navigate to Contents/MacOS/chrome . Then the two buttons will appear. Thanks for this trick. It has worked great for me.

    Reply
  4. Iban euskal-linux.homelinux.org
    Posted February 8, 2005 at 5:36 am | Permalink

    MUY UTIL !!!

    Thank you very much / Mutxas gracias / Eskerrik asko !!

    Reply
  5. Rob quannum.co.uk
    Posted February 15, 2005 at 4:23 pm | Permalink

    Beautiful! Works like a charm on Thunderbird 1.0/Windows!

    Thanks!

    Reply
  6. Gordon gordonmclean.co.uk
    Posted February 18, 2005 at 10:42 am | Permalink

    Worked first time on XP Pro/Thunderbird 1.0. Cheers!

    Reply
  7. ShuMann
    Posted February 25, 2005 at 11:43 am | Permalink

    Whoa – great :)

    Haven’t tried this yet, but I’ve been looking for something like this for weeks. I hate not remembering and having the SAME newsfeeds on all my systems, and both work workstations (Linux/Windows).

    If it works as advertsed, I’ll be ONE happy puppy! Thanks!

    Reply
  8. Ted readthistome.com
    Posted March 8, 2005 at 5:46 pm | Permalink

    You rule. This was exactly what I needed, and it works — two things that don’t often go together.

    Reply
  9. hugoyg
    Posted March 9, 2005 at 8:51 pm | Permalink

    it work well,tkx

    Reply
  10. none
    Posted March 17, 2005 at 7:49 pm | Permalink

    Thank you, this worked. It drove me nuts not having the same newsfeeds on all my systems.

    Reply
  11. sninky-chan badscene.com
    Posted March 19, 2005 at 12:53 pm | Permalink

    Thanks, this JFW’d! Saved my life. Well done!!

    Reply
  12. WhisKiTo whiskito.blogspot.com
    Posted May 8, 2005 at 1:02 pm | Permalink

    Really good Extension

    Why doesn’t it appear in Official Thunderbird Extensions?

    thanks man ;)

    Reply
  13. Jorge Laranjo thetaoofwebdesign.tk
    Posted May 12, 2005 at 10:35 am | Permalink

    Hi!
    It’s works well on my MAC OS X (10.3.9) and using Thunderbird.
    Just two negative points.
    Does not support OPML using levels (subfolders) and doesn’t support ATOM feeds.

    Reply
  14. Siim zero.ee
    Posted May 17, 2005 at 1:48 pm | Permalink

    Hi,

    Thanks for saving couple of hours my time :)

    Reply
  15. Adam Saunders marketanomaly.com
    Posted July 15, 2005 at 2:05 pm | Permalink

    This is great. Do you know of an extension that will import email and folders from Entourage? I’ve made the transition on my work/PC and I’m trying to finish moving my home/Mac account to Thunderbird.

    Reply
  16. Tony Harper
    Posted July 29, 2005 at 9:38 am | Permalink

    Excellent! Thanks for the info.

    Reply
  17. Leander de Graaf
    Posted August 2, 2005 at 5:10 am | Permalink

    I succesfully exported my RSS feeds from MacOS X 10.4 to Windows XP and vice versa using Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6, except for my folder structure, but that is not a big problem for me i’m glad you have made this patch available to the public.
    Maybe it will be nice to make an official extension for this functionality or even suggest it for the official client?

    Reply
  18. Jalansutera jalansutera.com
    Posted August 10, 2005 at 9:37 pm | Permalink

    thanks for the step-by-step howto. it works on my thunderbird

    Reply
  19. Vishal
    Posted August 18, 2005 at 1:23 pm | Permalink

    Thanks a lot, the step-by-step instructions work perfectly.

    Reply
  20. TarGz ralblog.com
    Posted September 17, 2005 at 10:06 am | Permalink

    Very cool,
    that’s work’s fine on my “portable thunderbird” who run from my usb key.

    Thanks

    Reply
  21. Mick adwentures.com
    Posted October 12, 2005 at 12:29 am | Permalink

    Cheers. I searched all over for how to do this. Thanks.

    Reply
  22. A
    Posted May 2, 2008 at 2:40 am | Permalink

    Cannot find the newsblog.jar. What is the new link ?

    Reply
  23. Dougal dougal.gunters.org
    Posted May 2, 2008 at 8:04 am | Permalink

    A: This is no longer needed. OPML support has been in Thunderbird officially for quite a while now. When I moved hosts, I didn’t bother moving some old files, like the newsblog.jar.

    Reply
  24. import oit-group.com
    Posted September 6, 2009 at 7:35 pm | Permalink

    Very cool,
    that’s work’s
    Very cool,

    http://www.oit-group.com/About-Us

    Reply

24 Trackbacks

  1. By Travellers Tale on April 6, 2005 at 5:21 pm

    の読み込み、書き出しができないこと。これじゃ使えないと思っていたところ、OPML が扱えるように機能拡張したファイルを配布しているところを発見。 geek ramblings » Thunderbird 1.0 OPML Import/Export NetNewsWire Lite から OPML

  2. By soeren says on April 13, 2005 at 9:26 am

    It also provides tighter integration, for example, using a Firefox plug-in, you can click and link or go to any page and try and subscribe to it from the contextual menu. That’s all fine and dandy. After I figured out how to patch my Thunderbird to allow for OPML export , I had most of my feeds set up, except that it ignored the hierarchy (I’m not sure whether Thunderbird’s export was hierarchical in the first place, however, so this may not be Bloglines’s fault at all). Here

  3. By Verstehen & Gestalten - Weblog @ myblog.de on April 16, 2005 at 7:27 pm

    eine praktische Angelegenheit, es ist ein XML-”Dialekt”, der alle (Bloglines-)Feeds sammelt und in eine Datei packt. Zunächst war ich etwas enttäuscht: Soll ich nun die ganzen Feeds von Hand eintragen? Nach kurzer Suche stiess ich zum Glück auf diese Anleitung : man muss eine Datei namens “Newsblog.jar” bei Thunderbird aufspüren ( im Ordner “chrome”) und mit der vom o.g. Blog überschreiben. Beim Mac (OSX) hab ich erstmal ne Weile gesucht, bis ich die newsblog.jar Datei gefunden habe:

  4. By Max At Eleven - Blog on May 3, 2005 at 5:28 pm

    My definitive solution to the RSS/Atom feeds problem Finally, I solved my problems with reading the RSS/Atom feeds. Better, I hope so. The ingredients of this temporary success are: An USB pen drivePortable MozUp Thunderbird MozUp Launcher Thunderbird 1.0 OPML Import/Export Before, I’ve been searching for a solution to get readable and portable feeds. What I needed was an RSS/Atom aggregator for Windows freeware, without .NET platform necessity, stable and portable. Until now, I tried some aggregators, always

  5. By richard-heider.de [Scrapbook] on May 21, 2005 at 10:45 pm

    Thunderbird 1.0 OPML Import/Export Convert Thunderbird Subscriptions to OPML

  6. By Blogs Of The Day » popular articles on WordPress blogs on June 3, 2005 at 4:55 pm

    Franto.com Flash blog » Hapland2 solution. Flash CLAMP Campus Adventures » Is Apple OSX Tiger Inherently Insecure? Tech macewan » Ubuntu Hoary with F-Spot, Evince & more Ubuntu Linux geek ramblings » Thunderbird 1.0 OPML Import/Export Blogs, Web, Tech Een frisse kijk op.. » MSN Virtual Earth Overig

  7. By Nuudelisoppa on June 11, 2005 at 1:56 pm

    geek ramblings Ed’s blog Tried it with Thunderbird 1.0.2 (20050317) and it works.

  8. By Max At Eleven - Blog on June 15, 2005 at 11:47 am

    Finally, I solved my problems with reading the RSS/Atom feeds. Better, I hope so. The ingredients of this temporary success are: An USB pen drive Portable MozUp Thunderbird MozUp Launcher Thunderbird 1.0 OPML Import/Export Before, I’ve been searching for a solution to get readable and portable feeds. What I needed was an RSS/Atom aggregator for Windows freeware, without .NET platform necessity, stable and portable.

  9. By Weblog for Costin Manolache on January 21, 2005 at 1:11 am

    Reading mail list over RSS

    Probably old news – but I just found it today. Gmane – the mail-list-to-news gateway I’m using for most mailing lists – is also providing an RSS feed.For example: http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.comp.jakarta.tomcat.devel Also a ‘weblog-like’ view – check…

  10. By Rerum Varium on January 21, 2005 at 8:22 am

    Importar OPML en Thunderbird

    Si no fuera por Dougal Campbell, ya habría desechado Mozilla Thunderbird como cliente de correo y News. En el artículo citado hay una lista infalible de pasos para agregar soporte de importación de archivos OPML. ¡Gracias!…

  11. By Ed's Blog on February 1, 2005 at 3:39 am

    Import/Export rss feeds with Thunderbird

  12. By Mike’s Geek Web Blog » Blog Archive » Import / Export RSS Feed tool for Mozilla Thunderbird on March 22, 2005 at 5:54 pm

    [...] as getting tired of keeping my aggregators at the house and at work in synch until I found this. This just made my life alot easier. This entry was po [...]

  13. By soeren says » Blog Archive » Bloglines on April 14, 2005 at 1:46 am

    [...] menu. That’s all fine and dandy. After I figured out how to patch my Thunderbird to allow for OPML export, I had most of my feeds set up, except that it ignored the hiera [...]

  14. By sequential statements » Thunderbird 1.0 Import/Export OPML on April 25, 2005 at 11:43 am

    [...] herf=”http://mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/”>Thunderbird’s lack of ability to import/export OPML. It’s a quick install and works flawlessly.

    [...]

  15. By Citizen Keith on May 8, 2005 at 11:49 am

    [...] city’s 60s and 70s R&B scene. Straw – I finally settled on a Linux aggregator. Thunderbird OPML Import/Export – I didn’t realize that Thunderbi [...]

  16. By Over 40 on May 20, 2005 at 6:19 am

    RSSリーダーソフトに再挑戦してみる

    そういえばHeadline-Readerに送金していたのを思い出した。 1年くら…

  17. By Chow Crave :: News Aggregator / Syndication / RSS|Atom Feeds : เมื่อเกิดอาการ blog overload :: August :: 2005 on August 11, 2005 at 7:52 am

    [...] [...]

  18. By Chow Crave :: News Aggregator / Syndication / RSS|Atom Feeds : เมื่อเกิดอาการ blog overload :: August :: 2005 on August 11, 2005 at 7:53 am

    [...] มาถึงตรงนี้บางคนอาจจะสังเกตเห็นว่า เอ๊ะ ทำไมหน้าต่างนี้ของบุกถึงมีปุ่มขึ้นมาพิเศษสองอันที่ (ปุ่ม Import / Export OPML…) ไม่เห็นจะมีในหน้าต่างของเพื่อนๆเลยล่ะ อันนี้ก็เพราะว่าบุกลง patch พิเศษที่ทำให้มีปุ่มพิเศษสองปุ่มนี้เพิ่มขึ้นมาน่ะค่ะ ข้อดีของการลง patch นี้ก็คือทำให้เราสามารถ save (export) รายการเว็บที่เราสมัครไว้ไปใช้กับโปรแกรมอ่านข่าวตัวอื่นๆ (โดยการ import) ได้ ไม่ต้องมานั่ง add ทีละรายการอย่างที่เรากำลังจะทำต่อไปนี้อีกหลายๆรอบน่ะค่ะ ถ้าเพื่อนๆสนใจจะลง ก็ทำตามวิธีทำในเว็บที่บุกได้ลิ้งค์แล้วกันนะคะ บุกขอไม่เขียนถึง [...]

  19. By b’s mixed bag :: News Aggregator / Syndication / RSS|Atom Feeds : เมื่อเกิดอาการ blog overload :: August :: 2005 on August 17, 2005 at 3:59 pm

    [...] มาถึงตรงนี้บางคนอาจจะสังเกตเห็นว่า เอ๊ะ ทำไมหน้าต่างนี้ของบุกถึงมีปุ่มขึ้นมาพิเศษสองอันที่ (ปุ่ม Import / Export OPML…) ไม่เห็นจะมีในหน้าต่างของเพื่อนๆเลยล่ะ อันนี้ก็เพราะว่าบุกลง patch พิเศษที่ทำให้มีปุ่มพิเศษสองปุ่มนี้เพิ่มขึ้นมาน่ะค่ะ ข้อดีของการลง patch นี้ก็คือทำให้เราสามารถ save (export) รายการเว็บที่เราสมัครไว้ไปใช้กับโปรแกรมอ่านข่าวตัวอื่นๆ (โดยการ import) ได้ ไม่ต้องมานั่ง add ทีละรายการอย่างที่เรากำลังจะทำต่อไปนี้อีกหลายๆรอบน่ะค่ะ ถ้าเพื่อนๆสนใจจะลง ก็ทำตามวิธีทำในเว็บที่บุกได้ลิ้งค์แล้วกันนะคะ บุกขอไม่เขียนถึง [...]

  20. By geek ramblings » Firefox and Thunderbird Betas on September 14, 2005 at 10:23 am

    [...] The new version of Thunderbird has added improvements to the RSS handling, so that hacks aren’t needed anymore. You can import and export feed lists in OPML format, and you can even have sub-folders now — sortof. You can add multiple feeds under a single folder. But the feeds won’t be individually selectable — the items all just intermingle together under the folder. There’s also no auto-detection of feeds, or drag-and-drop, both of which would be really good additions. [...]

  21. By Entrepreneur Geek » Blog Archive » ThunderBird and OPML on January 2, 2006 at 8:04 am

    [...] I read about newsblog.jar on Dougal Campbell’s blog. Many people wrote about it, including Wayne Graham and Gumuz. Dougal has basically added some functions to a JavaScript file in the newsblog.jar file that provide OPML import / export. I thought of giving it a try. [...]

  22. By oemebamo on January 7, 2006 at 1:08 pm

    [...] Google Reader? Aha. Opml Import? Mja. Thunderbird Opml Export? Hmm, naaah. Of toch? Aha. Fijn! google rss thunderbird google» rss» thunderbird» [...]

  23. By Too Many Words » Blog Archive » Thoughts On Pluck on January 9, 2006 at 1:26 pm

    [...] And if anyone is using Thunderbird and is hesitating to switch because of the hassle of re-entering all the feed URIs, download this nice little extension from Dougal Campbell’s Geek Ramblings to add OPML support to Thunderbird. Dougal is one of the developers of WordPress, another worthy project if you’re not already running it (eyes towards all you Blogger people). Technorati Tags: about.com, amphetadesk, dcist, dougal campbell, firefox, metroblogging dc, newsgator, opml, pluck, rss, searchfox, thunderbird, washington post, wordpress [...]

  24. By LOSER’s Hideout » Blog Archive » 썬더버드(ThunderBird) - OPML 가져오기, 내보내기 기능 추가하기 on January 22, 2006 at 12:12 am

    [...] http://dougal.gunters.org/blog/2005/01/03/thunderbird-opml No related posts [...]

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