I just got my GPS and I need some help.............

You don't need to open them if you are just trying to load them to your GPS unit. You need Garmin's POI Loader software to load them.

If you WANT to open them on your computer, then you can open them with Notepad or Microsoft Excel.

Check out the Getting Started and FAQs sections linked at the top of each page.

Here's a good place to start.
http://www.poi-factory.com/node/85

Sometimes there is an Excel viewing program and you might be able to find a free download. You might be able to get an old version of Excel. There is always the issue of backwards compatibility, although csv actually stands for comma separated values. This also means you can open as a text file although its readability will be limited.

If you don't have MS Excel (Office) there is a free alternative - OpenOffice from Sun Microsystems. Check here:

http://www.openoffice.org/

csv file is a text format file, with comma delimiters between each data column therefore you can open it using notepad or any text editor. However, you would not see the data aligned like when viewing using Excel, but at least you can see the contents of the file and edit it if required. If you are going to edit it using a text editor, be extra careful in maintaining (don't accidentally delete) those comma delimitters between the fields.

Thanks

I work with .csv files in Excel quite a bit and newer versions of Excel (2003 onward) seem to open them just fine in proper column-row format with the header info (if any is contained in the file). So if you really need to view the data then try opening with Excel or some other spreadsheet program.

But as MM mentioned, you only need to copy it to your gps with POI Loader to use it.