RSS reader in Outlook 2007 sucks. I didn’t know it suck until I tried it out. Here’s why tried it out anyway.

My favorite RSS reader was Google Reader, but after continuously reading horror stories about disabled Google accounts (that’s include the whole Google accounts), I switched to FeedDemon like 2 months ago and quite happy with it. However, the down thing is, so many desktop apps run at the same time in my machine. I need to minimize my computer’s memory ram effort to runs these apps together. So I thought it would be nice to integrate my email client with RSS Reader, and later I found out that Outlook 2007 has that capability. Therefore I decide to import the OPML file from my FeedDemon and later found that integrating RSS reader and Email client is actually not the best idea.

As an email client, it’s the best I can find by far. It’s far better than Thunderbird and a lot cooler than their previous versions. But their RSS reader still suck:

1. Well, first and foremost, since I have more than 500 feeds in my feed list, is because it doesn’t recognize folder hierarchy in OPML like other feed reader does. That’s idiotic. I mean, this is the first time I ever use feed reader app that can’t be organized into folders.
2. Secondly, well, it’s just messes up with emails. Downloading (using Send/Receive) emails are also means downloading RSS. I get around 300-400 emails a day, if it’s messed up with RSS, then well, I screwed up.
3. Thirdly, because there are so many things going in Outlook, the app becomes slow to load.

Here’s how to delete all these annoying RSS subscription in Outlook 2007. First thing to do is to disable Outlook’s RSS Sync. Now open your Outlook 2007 and follow these steps:

1. Click Tools
2. Click Options
3. Select Other tab
4. Click Advanced Options
5. Uncheck Sync RSS feeds to the Common Feed List
6. Click OK.

And you’re done for the first part. Now the second part is to delete RSS subscription from your Outlook 2007:

1. Click Tools and then Options.
2. Select Mail Setup tab
3. Click Data Files
4. Click RSS Feeds tab
5. Now you can either delete it one by one or you can select all feed using SHIFT key
6. Click Remove and confirm.
7. Done.

Now the third part, the sucky part. You need to expand the RSS feed icon in your Personal Folder (at the left bar) and delete the feeds one by one. As you’ll need to confirm deletion at every feed (that’s more then around 1.500 clicks for me) from Microsoft’s knowledge base, I understand that deleting a feed means unsubscribing as well.

This works for me, I hope it works for you too.