POI on my Nuvi 205w - WHAT?

I have 20,000 plus Custom POI's in about 15 categories in all my GPSr's.
I believe your problem is that when you load new POI's onto your unit with Garmin's POI Loader it deletes all POI's already on the unit.
You have to reload ALL the POI's at the same time. Originals PLUS the new ones.
Just keep all your POI's in one (main) folder on your computer.

MrKenFL is right. It is a rather stupid way to handle files but the POI Loader from Garmin can only handle one file name. If you make any changes to any of your POI files, you have to reload everything into your GPS. It isn't your GPS, it's Garmin's software.

Jack j

You can also use the renaming method, if you dislike reloading everything.

See: http://www.poi-factory.com/node/16639

THAT'S it!

I put the files in the same folder and victory! I put them in different folders trying to keep track of them better but I guess I can't.

Thanks for everyone's help - BIG time

I email you some information through the contact tab.See if you can use it.

I upload a POI file and THEN rename it. I upload another POI file and THEN rename it. I have numerous files on my unit and don't have to upload all of them repeatedly. I just upload the ones I want to change and then rename them appropriately. No problem........

Why do you reconcile yourself to a lifetime of renaming files instead of creating separate named folders on the GPS and never having to change the name from POI.gpi? You can have a multitude of POI.gpi files as long as they are not in the same folder.

The reason that I use the renaming technique is that I set proximity alerts in manual mode for a number of POIs. So once I have them loaded with my desired proximity set, I don't want to have to load them in manual mode again. Breaking them down into smaller sets lets me download some in automatic mode with less effort, and others in manual mode with greater control. I do use the subfolder method too, for example I have all of my retail stores of interest in a Stores folder, but I still load it in manual mode because I want alerts on a few of the stores but not on most. Not wanting to do the long manual mode reload every time I update something else, like red light cameras, I rename poi.gpi to stores.gpi and don't have to worry about it again unless I add or change a stores POI files.

You are talking about creating folders/subfolders on the computer. I am talking about creating separate folders on the GPS and storing POI.gpi files in each of them. It is exactly the same as what you are currently doing, except you don't have to delete the old file and rename the new ones.

So how is having lots of folders (which you have to name) and having lots of files all named poi.cgi any easier than only having to open one folder in the GPS and having multiple .gpi files in it with easily distinguished names?

With computers there are often many ways to acomplish the same goal. I completely see that your approach works, but I don't see any benefit in it over the approach that I use. And I would rather have fewer windows to open into the GPS flash drive.

I create a Redlight folder on the GPS once and thereafter never have to go onto the GPS when I update the file -- I tell POI Loader to load POI.gpi into that folder and it overwrites the old file. I never again go to the GPS -- ever. You must find the original redlight.gpi on the GPS, delete it, and then find the new POI.gpi and rename it redlight.gpi -- and you do that EVERY time you update the file. It is giant benefit. I have no idea what you mean by, "I would rather have fewer windows to open into the GPS flash drive."

I had not realized that POI loader would put the results elsewhere than the default POI folder, thought you were manually moving the uploaded POI.gpi file. I may have to take a closer look. I do have one window open into the GPS, then just rename the downloaded POI to represent what it contains. Not at all hard to do and I may well just stick with this, but I do want to take a look at what you are doing with POI loader.

Major thanks! this did what I wanted and worked perfect. I really appreciate it.

You just have to use one MAIN folder to hold all your other POI subfolders. And then point POILoader just to the main folder.

Now you have hit on the reason why I use GPX files instead of CSV. CSV files are smaller but limited as to the info they can contain. GPX files allow you to set proximity alerts and speed alerts individually by entry. In other words, you can have a GPX file with 10 entries in it with different alert distances and speeds. Or you can set proximity alerts on some, speed alerts on others and still others with no alert set, all in the same file. I use GeePeeEx Editor to generate my files but it is not a free program.

Jack J

Yea, I had already figured out this and other advantages of GPX files. Unfortunately, most of the POI files on this site are available as CSV and not GPX, and the "throw anything you want in fields 3 and 4, with no regards to convention or even consistency" approach to making CSVs makes converting any existing ones to GPX extremely labor intensive. In some cases I'll say imposable, if I can't examine field 4 and determine what the contents are then I hardly see how I can build a gpx file from it.

I don't see size as a real disadvantage, I think the GPX file will take either the same amount of space or a bit less than CSV when loaded into the gps. But complexity of the file is keeping a lot of people from making GPX files, and it's not easy to do simple manipulation on a GPX file, such as extract all of the POIs for one state. It's nice that there is a tool for working on GPX files, but as you say it is not a free tool and contributors are not required to buy and use it. So as long as many of the POIs that I load are only available as CSV and not GPX, then the renaming approach is the better method for me.

Typically I have found that .gpx poi files tend to require 5-10 times the memory that a .csv file does.

On hard disk or in the GPS? Are we comparing the same POI set here? I do expect that a GPX is that much larger on hard disk than a similar csv poi file, but I would not expect it to take more space in the gps (both types files should be translated to internal format by POI loader, and gpx files should actually translate better), if it does then that could be a real problem if using gpx files exclusively.