EXCEL

If you want a sample file just downloand any CSV file (unclear what you looking for).

was wanting a formatted excel templete to do my own poi's

that is all?

thanks

The format is simple (no template is needed):

longitude, latitude, name, description

Check out the FAQ

I was new once too...but yes its simple so do not be afraid of downloading a POI file it won't hurt anything and open it in Excel...The headers will not be there..But the above post and FAQs will help you understand what column is what...

Have fun!

If you have excel just open it up and put the data in as stated in above remarks.Once you have all the data click on file at top of the excel sheet and then next screen put in the file name you want and save as type use the down arrow and select cvs(comma delimited) and thats it.Just load into your gps using poi loader.

My first few I made with Excel, now I find Notepad easier.

OK,

i have done it... i know this isnt rocket science but all new too me.

THANKS EVERONE for putting up with a NEWBIE

have a GREAT DAY

werskine.Glad you got the information you needed.Now you are on the way to making all the poi's you want and adding them to the poi site.

Be sure to save it a a CSV not an excel file. Using excel should be easier than a text editor since you don't have to worry about field definitions. It will automatically keep the columns as you have them when you save as CSV.

The problem i have mostly is getting the lines to read right, i haven figured out how to get a line break into EXEL, it is slowly coming around tho, on my secound poi and fixin to post it shortly.

If you are at the end of the d column just hit enter for a new line. If you want multiple lines in c or d hit alt enter after each line such as a multiple line address.

depending on what I want to do, I use both excel and notepad equally. Sorting, you got to do in excel. But sometimes, looking at something in notepad, it is easier to find mistakes a lot of times.

Go to this thread http://www.poi-factory.com/node/11288 and scroll down to this might work and look at the program that you can dowload that will help out on the line breaks,

WOW I just tried a short poi, with copy and paste to column D. Checked it on my Nuvi... it worked great, now all i have to do is do a bigger POI and see if it hold all the way thru it, sure do APPRECIATE that tip.. Thanks

The problem with "Alt+Enter" is that some nuvis (such as the 350) doesn't like those carriage returns.

When i just did mine i didnt use the alt enter, all i did was a cut and paste for 3 lines, the address, city and phone number and saved it, when i looked at it, it showed perfect, ( had to manually take out the Quote marks for the lat and long)

So how does the 350 handle multiple address lines or does it?

I assume you're speaking of linebreaks, not carriage returns. The nuvi 350/360 have a problem displaying standard linebreaks. They have to be converted to <br> to display correctly. POI Verifier has options to convert standard linebreaks to <br>, and <br> to standard linebreaks. See:
http://www.poi-factory.com/node/1486

RT

You can also do a mass change using notepad to change the alt-enter char to <br> ....if you need it.

You can also avoid Excel and use POI Editor then download it as a csv.

And wouldn't it be nice if POI Loader handled all of the differences based on the attached Garmin GPS? Including but not limited to just line breaks. Certainly what I would expect...

if i want to make one big list using POI EDIT, how would i do that also how do i calibrate the map.

thanks

Maybe I'm crazy but, what about using this program? I downloaded the Java file and installed it.

http://www.poi2go.com/mypoi/

I use it to create a fast list and then edit and save them to the format of my liking.

hey thanks i will try it..

again THANKS for all of the help

The POI files I've created to date are usually based on tabular data I've pulled off of corporate/government websites, and then I manipulate that data in Excel. In Excel, when I want to put line breaks between concatenated cell entries (like address components), I use CHAR(10)... so the resulting cell entry would looks something like =A1&char(10)&B1. Once you have your data the way it needs to be, you CUT it from the Excel sheet and PASTE SPECIAL - Values into a new sheet that you save as a .CSV

It works. Thanks.

what is maximum lines for a poi file? I want to merge several poi together as one file.

I don't know that there is one. I have never heard of anyone hitting the wall as far as the number of lines within a given POI file.

65536 Lines Max and columns A - IV. Whew

Go for it.

Curt

Isn't that an Excel limitation when building a spreadsheet? Using a text editor like Notepad or Wordpad you can go beyond that. I don't use Excel to build POI files.

The 64K (65,532) limitation is pretty standard and holds from the early days of using only a single 8 bit byte to hold the line count. If you start pushing that limit, you had better be using a different program set up for large arrays and databases. And for Notepad, they'll tell you to use a full-featured word processor in lieu.

If a file gets that big in whatever, I sure don't want to try to work with it. As for building POI files, I simply can't comprehend using a word processor document of any kind, especially when it is so easy to convert to them when needed.

Further, I appologize for the assumption that the question refered to a spreadsheet. Usually none of the entries are the same length and trying to handle them in text files makes me crosseyed. I know there are other programs out there, but for me, spreadsheets at least let me get a handle on everything. To each his own.

Anyway, if not using a spreadsheet, I would assume the file limit would be finite , however, hard drive(s) and GPS internal as well as external would be the extreme limiting factor. You can now buy at least an 8GB card, maybe larger, so if you need all of that information, I commend you because you are a travler.

Happy travling

Curt

it's a text editor with powerful text manipulation functions such as grep search & replace, line sorting, etc, etc. which can perform across documents whether they're in open windows or sitting closed on your hard disk or a remote server. it's a favorite of programmers.