How To Use IMPORTFEED to Fetch Feed from URL in Google Sheets

Last Updated on October 31, 2023 by Jake Sheridan

In this tutorial, you will learn how to use the IMPORTFEED function to fetch a feed from a given URL in Google Sheets.

How To Use IMPORTFEED to Fetch Feed from URL in Google Sheets

Google Sheets has a powerful function called IMPORTFEED that can be used to fetch RSS feeds (or Atom feeds) and display them in your spreadsheet. This can be a great way to quickly pull in content from a variety of sources, and make it easier to analyze.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a web protocol that allows web users to access content published on the web. RSS feeds are a great way to stay up to date on the latest news and updates from websites, blogs, and other online sources.

In this guide, we will explain how to use the IMPORTFEED function in Google Sheets to fetch an RSS feed and display it in your spreadsheet.

How To Use the IMPORTFEED Function in Google Sheets

Here’s how to use the IMPORTFEED function in Google Sheets.

Step 1

First, we’ll need to determine what RSS feed to use for the IMPORTFEED function.

For this example, we will use an RSS feed that pulls the frontpage of the Hacker News social news website.

Step 2

Select an empty cell to place the IMPORTFEED function.

Type the formula “=IMPORTFEED()” and enter the URL of the RSS feed as an argument.

Step 3

Hit the Enter key to evaluate the function.

In the example above, we were able to retrieve the latest news articles and posts from the provided RSS feed.

Step 4

We can set the third argument to TRUE to add headers to the output.

Step 5

We can set the fourth argument of IMPORTFEED to a number to limit the number of entries to return.

Step 6

The second argument allows us to specify which fields to return.

In the example above, we modified the formula to only return data that falls under the field “items url”.

We can continue adding more fields by changing the second argument.

Summary

This guide should be everything you need to use the IMPORTFEED function to fetch a feed from a specific URL in Google Sheets.

You may make a copy of this example spreadsheet to test it out on your own.