Curiouser & Curiouser

We all go through a learning curve with our nüvi's introduction to Custom POI. There has been a lot of discussion over questions like this in the past and they will come up again. Doing keyword searches and reading the FAQ here will enlighten your experience. You're not doing anything wrong.

In the basic form, you copy the POI files you want into a folder on your PC, most call this folder something like My POI, the name is immaterial as long is you know where it is. When you run POI Loader and point it at that folder it gathers up all the files within and rolls them into poi.gpi and stuffs this into the nüvi just as you discovered. When you go to Extras -> Custom POI, you will then see the POI lists just as the files were named on your PC within your folder. It is important to understand that whenever you run POI Loader, it will take the contents of your folder and replace the poi.gpi with a new one.

The question then remains, does the sweet_things_near_San Jose_V.csv file actually contain a point for a Carvel Ice Cream in Los Altos? This is a relatively short file, so you could open it in EXCEL or NotePad and search for Carvel. I used Extra_POI_Editor to open it and then used it's search function and it found one in Los Altos right away; in fact, it is the only one listed in this file. You can also use EPE to load all these points into Google Earth and then you can see a broad overview of all the points within a file as map pins on a zoomable map.

So, were you looking for this place within Extras or POI? POI contains the factory installed POI and Extras contains your added POI. These files are not merged.

Your steps would be to Go To -> Extras -> Custom POI -> sweet_things... and then do a search on Carv. That should be enough to bring up a list of Carvel Ice Cream shops.

Note, when you download a csv or a gpx file, you don't have to stick with the original file name. As long as you maintain the file extension, you may rename the file to something that you would prefer to see on the list. e.g. sweet_things_near_San_Jose_V.csv can be shortened to San Jose Sweets.csv if you would prefer. Some models don't like spaces in the name but this works fine on the 750.

Once you get a handle on this, there are more things you can do with these files... alerts, sounds, icons. Take it one step at a time and make it as complex or simple as you like.

Thank you very much TXRVer for your great info.
I knew I was doing something wrong and you hit the nail on the head with this:

"So, were you looking for this place within Extras or POI? POI contains the factory installed POI and Extras contains your added POI. These files are not merged".

I was looking in POI instead of Extras. Everything is fine. Well... at least for now anyway. There is still plenty of curve left on the learning curve for me. Thanks for the tip about EPE. I found it and I'm going to try that out over this coming weekend. I use Google Earth an awful lot and EPE will come in mighty handy I'm sure.

road_dog, if you haven't read the valuable information on Gary Hayman's website, do yourself a favor - read all six pages about Custom POIs and save the link as a favorite.

http://home.comcast.net/~ghayman3/garmin.gps/pagepoi.htm#pag...

Thanks koot. I will add that to my list of things to do over the weekend.