Garmin MapSource & POI Loader

First of all POI loader will load CSV files and GPX files. It will not read GDB files at all.

When you load Custom POIs to your GPS unit with POI Loader, they show up under Extras, not with the built in POIs. You need to search them separately.

Also, the icons from MapSource won't transfer with the Custom POIs. If you want icons, you have have to load them with the Custom POIs. If you click on the icons link at the top of each page on the site and scroll to the bottom, you will find instructions for loading Custom Icons with your Custom POIs.

Well... thank you. It's not exactly what I wanted to hear but if it's the truth - so be it!

Honestly, this is a bit disappointing! I figured custom POI would be searched along with built-in POI at the same time.

So now, I have to remember what is custom and isn't. For example, I bank at Capital One, there are a lot of them in the Dallas area. But not all of them are in the Garmin 2009 maps. So, I create a custom file, hoping it'll "fill in" the missing ones when I do a search.

But now I think you're telling me I have to search both the Garmin maps and my custom POI to see which one is closest to me at any given time?

Do other GPS models do what I'm looking for? Garmin seems to have the most pre-loaded POI than others I looked at. Did I buy the wrong GPS?

Thanks

I'm not aware of other manufacturers that allow you to add Custom POIs to be searched with the built in ones. Typically, you will likely find that the Custom POIs are much more up to date than the built in ones. So for things that important to you like that, I would search the Custom POIs first. Then use the built in ones as a backup for things that you don't necessarily have loaded as Custom POIs.

In reality, it doesn't really take that much time to search both of them separately. You can do it in a matter of seconds and be on your way.

Hi,

Hmm .. that does not seem to happen to me. I have a nüvi (and I'm new to this) and when I load the .csv files it tells me that I've loaded 33000, or so, points, but when I go to extra it just shows nothing. Prior to loading the custom points it did give me a warning that noting was loaded so something is different. Any idea?

Martin

Ahh .. select "Extras" and "Custom POIs" to see the list of custom POIs

Martin

I had several card loaders hooked to my computer, after loading the poi's to a SD card in my gps, I wasn't finding the updated pois, it turned I downloaded them to a different SD card....