Lost all my Custom POI's. Creating/saving new ones?

Unfortunately, POILoader takes all your individual POI files and combines them all into a single file called POI.gpi on your Garmin. You can copy this file back to your computer as a backup, but I am not aware of a way to de-compile it back to all those individual POI files that you started with.

And yes, you are correct in your statement that trying to add a single POI file will overwrite what you have now. There is a way to prevent this, though. Just rename the POI.gpi file to something else like OldPOI.gpi. It will still work, but it will not be overwritten when you add new POI's to your Garmin later.

Try GPS Babel. You should be able to extract some (if not all) of the data from the POI.GPI file.

Would GPS Babel be able to recreate the individual POI files or just one big CSV or GPX? That would really be impressive if it could restore what you started with.

No, it wouldn't know (I don't think) where the locations came from. I believe it would be one big file.

Why couldn't he do this...

In the GPSr, rename the poi.gpi to 'original.gpi' and then load the new ones that he has, that way, he can retain both the original ones as well as the new ones.

I recently had a hard drive failure with all of my POI's also on it. I was able to slave my failed hard drive to my new hard drive and I was able to retrieve all of my custom poi's. Have you tried this?

As a side comment, I take my "Custom POI" folder on my hard drive and make a ZIP file out of it and store a copy on my SD card that stays in my GPS. Not only does this allow me to get to them from any computer if I need to, it also provides a nice backup.

Of course, it sounds like you may not have backed up your entire computer, so in the future, invest the $100 or so for an external hard drive and make regular back ups of your important files.

Good luck!
PT

Hi –

I appreciate the suggestions. I’ve always saved a copy of all my files/documents onto other media, but it looks like my back-up needed to be backed-up in this case (I’ll know better next time).

Using johnc’s and MM’s ideas, I managed to extract a copy using GPSbabel, but it grouped all of the categories into one giant file with no separation of types and also put the lat/long coordinates into one column. It will be a ton of work to re-organize the date, but hey, at least I got the info!

I also like asianfire’s comment about saving the original poi.gpi as something else and then making a new version of poi.gpi.

Many thanks
Ron

Let me see if I understand this right...

I can take all of my Favorites (gpx) and Customs (gpi) that are in my 650 now, and copy them off to a safe protected spot on my desktop pc (in case I mess something up). I can then upload a new set of Customs and Favorites to my 650, and I'm good to go.

But if I DO screw something up, I can always take the saved/protected set of gpi's and gpx's and re-upload them back to my 650 (in the original file-locations), and I'll be right back where I started.

Do I have that all correct?

Thanks!
Ron

If you copy them to a safe place, you do not need to upload a new set. If you do upload a new set, then that set might differ from the original that you "saved" to the PC.

So, If you save a copy of the files to your PC and then mess up something, you can copy them back onto the unit and be back where you started.

Thanks, gpfoster. That is exactly what I was asking (altho it might not have sounded like it from my words)!

I feel better now, and can update my files without worrying that I screw it all up permanently.

Ron