In NewzScape, to see the list of available newsgroups on your Usenet server, click the Add Groups button on the Downloader.
Use the Download List button to download the list of newsgroups from your server, and then use the Search button to find appropriate groups. For example, type in “cat” and click Search to see a list of all the newsgroups with “cat” in their names. Keep in mind that many of these groups will not be active. Some will have been added by people as a joke, and some will be abandoned. The only way to tell is to look inside the newsgroup.
Once you have searched for some newsgroups, you can sort them into alphabetical order by clicking the list header where it says Newsgroups. NewzScape doesn’t automatically sort the list because if your search results in a large list, the sorting might take a while. So the program gives you the option to sort or not.
You can drag-and-drop a single newsgroup to the list on the Downloader window. Using the normal list-selection methods, you can select many newsgroups and drag-and-drop them all at once.
From time-to-time, click the New Newsgroups tab, and use the Check for New Newsgroups button to see what new groups have been added. Any newsgroups found are not automatically saved, so make sure to use the Save button if you want to keep them.
If you know the name of the newsgroup you want to use, you can just type it in on the Quick Add tab.
The list of newsgroups is stored in a text file in the Newsgroups folder inside the NewzScape folder. There will be one file for each Usenet server’s list. You can use a word processor to open the files if you want, but make sure not to change the first line, which is where NewzScape stores the last time it checked for new groups.
You don’t have to download the lists for all the servers to which you have access. If you are using common newsgroups that pretty much all servers have, you can just download the list from one server. You can then drag newsgroups to any Downloader regardless of which server it is using. If the group isn’t present on a server, the Downloader will give you an error message.