Getting POI's from unit

Attach your unit to your computer and it will appear as a new drive. Open the Garmin/POI folder. You should see a file name poi.gpi. This is the POI files.

According to this thread you can convert the poi file to another format using gpsvisualizer http://www.poi-factory.com/node/16436 (I've never tried it though)

That does work. If you go to: http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/convert_input you can pull it right from the Garmin (if it's connected to that computer via USB) and save a csv file to your PC. Will need to edit the csv file with Excel though. The file will contain extra columns and the l/l columns are backwards.

Works for Favorites and POI.

If you want to back up your favorites, connect to your computer, go to the "My Computer" icon (or Computer in Vista) and open the Garmin. You will see a folder named Garmin. Opening this folder, you will see a file called "GPX". You will want to copy and save the file called "Current GPX".

Doing this will save all your "favorites", but not the Custom POI Files you have. I always make a disk copy of the file for my Custom POI Files, this way I will have one to take with me, and I can share with my not so technical friends.

I recommend backing up the Current GPX file on a regular basis, anytime you make changes to your favorites, make sure you back it up!

Thanks for the responses. I will try that link and see what i can figure out. Either way, can i add just a new set of POI's and not lose the ones i have stored? I need to check it out but my friend has my unit for a few days.

You can copy multiple favorite gpx files (with different names) in gpx folder on Nuvi.

You can also have multiple custom poi gpi files (with different names) in poi folder on Nuvi.

Nuvi will read / display all.

There is much discussion about these topics on this site. If you have not already, give search feature a try.

I tried to a search but honestly i dont understand alot of the info. I am pretty new to the POI thing and how the Nuvi works. All these different file extensions have me lost. I just want to copy what i have on my nuvi to my computer to keep as a backup, thne install the new ones along with them if i cant figure out how to just upload the new ones without losing what i have already.

In a nutshell, NO.

As others have pointed out the unit uses 2 files for the POI information. Current.GPX is the locations you have stored in Favorites and your recently found locations. POI.GPI is the compiled list of the custom POI you loaded with POILoader.

Some have tried to tell you that it is possible to make copies of the files and use them in conjunction with new files you create, but you can't combine the new and old into a single file. As others stated, there can be multiple copies of POI.GPI the unit will read IF they are in different folders one level deep from the Garmin/POI folder.

From what I understand, there are tools available that will read these files and convert them to either a CSV or GPX file, but I've never played with them.

Custom POI will not replace any of the built-in POI, they are part of the map set, so you will not loose any of those. The easiest track to take would be to list the custom poi, download new copies of the CSV or GPX files into a folder on you computer and then reload everything when you want to add new POI.