Excel rounding off poi's

Why do you insist on using Excel?

I guess I could use EasyGPS but I have never used it before. I do like entering in the data by had, kinda
makes me feel all the data will be correct. I may be
doing this the hard way so let me tell you what I am
doing.

1st I get an address and type it into Google Earth
I look at the point it found and if it's wrong I put a push pin in the correct location ( right at the door of the location). I've noticed sometimes it states the location is down the street and it isn't. I then write down the new Long and Lat of the push pin which is correct then enter those coordinates into Excel. On the Third column I name the location then save as a .csv . Google Earth puts a lot of my locations in the street or even down the road. I have to find the building and redo in order to make the coordinates correct. Is there a better way? If so I'm open to any ideas. Thanks

(Edit)
I just loaded up EasyGps and it seems it won't open
any of the zip / csv files I downloaded from POI Factory. Another thing is it won't load a Google kml files . Also from what I can see it's can't make a poi only waypoints. Sorry for all the questions here but I'm new to all this GPS stuff but I am a fast learner. One thing I would like to know is what is the difference between a poi and a waypoint. If I have read correctly waypoints show up on the Map while poi don't they just alert. can I do what I want to do in EasyGps? I just can't figure out why Excel is doing what it's doing. It's very frustrating.

Well, I may just type the whole thing out in notepad
then save it as a csv. This is the right format correct?
ex:
-80.854859,35.216966,"Tavern On The Tracks"

I wrote the author of poiedit and I think that his program contains adware so I really don't want to install that on my machine.

I really want to learn how make these poi's, I know it can't be this hard.

I only use EasyGPS to take the data from my Garmin and dump my waypoints into a POI acceptable format. Basically waypoints and POI's are pretty much the same, but POI's have more associated data and some GPS units treat them differently.

Personally, I create most of my land-based POI's in Google Earth first, then save as KML, and then convert to CSV. Probably 90% of any custom POI's that I use are actually marked on my GPS, meaning I go there and mark the location then export the data from the GPS.

You stated that you save a KML file from Google and then convert to csv. What do you use to convert the kml file to csv. I'm not sure what's going on with my Excel but I just noticed that even when I open a csv file I have downloaded from POS Factory that I get random cells that are rounded off. Is this normal? Will these files still work if I load them?

ex.
-80.837193 35.227655 Dixie's Tavern
-80.84255 35.200266 City Tavern

-80.740481 35.316779 Flying Saucer
-80.84164 35.227906 Connolly's

This is what it's doing some cells are fine and
have 6 digits after the decimal and some get rounded
by dropping the 0 on the end. Is this normal?

...if the '0' is being shown or not in Excel. But, if you want Excel to stop rounding, all you have to do is go in to 'Format'>>'Cells'>>'Number' - and then click '6' for the number of decimal points it shows.

GC

Thank you..... Yes, that's correct all it's doing is dropping 0's off the end of the numbers. I'm new to GPS's and didn't know if the 6 digit's after the decimal was important or not. Since this is placement of points
Long/Lat I figured it could play a crucial role.

Well I tried what you said and It work but would save my changes. I highlighted all the Number values then I went to Format Cells then then to number. There was a value of 2 in the box so I changed it to 6. Everything looked great and I saved the setting. Well next time I entered excel by opening up the saved file everything was back to 2 again. If your saying that it's OK to drop the 0 , I'm going to stop worrying about this. The file is ready and if this doesn't affect it working properly I am going to upload it to poi factory.

Thank you for your help

( Edit )
I have found that the 0's being dropped will not affect
the poi. This is a good thing because this has had a lot of effort put into it.

...so I won't swear on a stack of bibles that dropping zeros makes no difference. Logically, it should make none.

If you go back in to excel, and re-do it to 6 decimal places, you'll discover that all the integers are still hanging out, waiting for you to see them. So, uploading the file to the GPS will transfer the 6 digits to the unit, and not just the 2 that are being displayed on your computer monitor. Microsoft programs do have their aggravating qualities.

GC

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=974947...

Ray

In this case, the dropped zeros at the end make no difference. The GPS reads the location either way.

JM

I tend to be a stickler for accuracy. I took an Excel college course about 10 years ago but never really used it afterwards but I do remember treating numbers as text will preserve their values. We're not manipulating the numbers so this makes sense to do this. JM were you a programmer in the past because you sure have a strong grasp on technical matters.

This link illustrates the formatting and it's simple to do.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HP052002481033.aspx

Ray

Trailing zeroes to the right of the decimal are insignificant in the same way that leading zeros to the left of the decimal are.

Excel is great for what it's designed to do (spreadsheets); in my experience it's rarely used that way.

Back when I was a boy, we had VisiCalc on a green Apple ][ monitor and we *liked* it. Both ways uphill in the snow, et cetera.