A couple of weeks ago I merged several Gmail addresses into one in order to use this single address as the ‘official’ Google account for my brand new HTC Magic. Of course, the same happened to Google Reader. I had two different sets of feeds, each one of them linked to a different Google account, and I needed to merge the two of them into one so that I could manage all my Google apps from a single account. I searched the Web for some information about the process, and was surprised to see it was all piece of cake. So if you ever need to merge two – or more – Google Reader accounts, this is what you have to do:
1. The first and most important step, just like when you’re merging Gmail addresses, is deciding which one will be your main Google Reader account. Once you’ve done that, login to your secondary Google Reader account, go to Settings and click on the Import/Export tab. Then click on Export your subscriptions as an OPML file, and Google will generate an XML file with all the feeds included in the current account.
2. The good thing about this exporting functionality is that it makes feeds really easy to move around. The bad thing is that it doesn’t include shared or starred items, which I personally use a lot. When I merged my Google Reader accounts I didn’t know that, and it wasn’t until I finished the whole process that I discovered I had lost all my starred items. Now I’ve learned a couple of tricks to export starred items that can save you the pain: one is sharing starred items in your old Google Reader account (and subscribe to them from your new Google Reader account), and the other one is exporting your starred items as an Atom feed – and then add it to your new Google account).
3. When you have all your feeds and starred items ready, logout and login to your primary Google Reader account. Go to Settings, click on the Import/Export tab and use the XML file to import your previously saved feeds. Likewise, follow the instructions of any of the two tricks explained in the previous step to import your shared and starred items.
4. If you need to import feeds from another Google Reader account to that same primary account, don’t be afraid: imported feeds won’t overwrite your current subscriptions, but just add up to the list. What you’ll need to do is distribute them into new folders – or reorganize you current Google Reader folders with our tutorial.
