IMPORTFEED for RSS in Google Sheets - Cell-by-Cell Formula Trace

Sample Data

Cell A1 contains the URL of an RSS feed. Cell B1 uses IMPORTFEED to get the titles of the first 3 items from that RSS feed.

Cell	Value
A1	https://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml
B1	=IMPORTFEED(A1, "items title", FALSE, 3)

Formula Trace

=IMPORTFEED(A1, "items title", FALSE, 3)

Step 1: A1

Step 2: IMPORTFEED("https://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml", "items title", FALSE, 3)

Step 3: Result in B1

Cell Reference Map

    A                      B
1 | URL Feed               | Title 1
2 |                        | Title 2
3 |                        | Title 3

Cell B1 references A1 for the RSS feed URL. The IMPORTFEED formula outputs titles into B1:B3.

Result

    A                                              B
1 | https://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml | Title 1
2 |                                                      | Title 2
3 |                                                      | Title 3

The RSS feed URL is in A1. The first three item titles from the feed appear in B1, B2, and B3.

Sheet Trace Quiz - 3 Questions

What does the IMPORTFEED formula in B1 do?

A Counts how many items are in the RSS feed

B Fetches the first 3 item titles from the RSS feed URL in A1

C Sums numbers from A1 to A3

D Displays the URL text from A1

Key Result

IMPORTFEED(URL, query, include_headers, number_of_items) fetches data from an RSS feed URL with options to select data type, headers, and item count.