Searching for POIs

Are you searching in the Custom POI section or the regular POI section of your unit?

Searching the built in POIs (Where to?, Food & Lodging, etc) will not search the Custom POIs. You need to search that part separately.

i'm actually searching by spelling. So, when I want to go to a "Trader Joes" for instance, I'm searching by Trader. It seems like this text search only looks through those items that were pre-loaded by Garmin -- and it doesn't look through those customer POIs that I've added.

If that's a limitation, that's quite a disappointment. The only approach in this case would be to go into the custom POI section directly.

I guess there's no way to index the added custom POIs, then?

Thanks!

The built-in POIs and the added Custom POIs are completely separate in your GPSr.

You can search either one by spelling, but you have to be in that section first. If you are searching one, it will not search anything in the other.

You can categorize your Custom POIs however you like. Just set them up in folders on your PC before you load them.

Think about it for a second. If you load a Trader Joes' POI file, your GPSr doesn't know if that's a grocery store, music store, restuarant, or whatever.

So, when you set up your Custom POIs on your PC, if you want all the grocery stores to be in one category, put them all in the same folder.

Actually, it is quite easy with Custom POIs. If you were looking for Trader Joes, you would know that you have a custom POI file on your GPSr for Trader Joes. Therefore, just go to Custom POIs, Trader Joes (possibly through a subcategory file you may have set up), and you will see all of the Trader Joes with the 50 closest to your location in order of distance. It is actually fewer keystrokes than typing in the name and then searching.
Most likely you would be aware of the Custom POIs that are loaded onto your GPSr.

The same problem of the gps not searching the custom POI section occurs when you perform a search "along current route." As mkahn stated, "you will see... the 50 closest to your location." It does not perform a true search along your route. It will only give the results of the closest locations. Sometimes, the 10 closest could be on a different interstate 100 miles away and #11 could be on your route only 1 mile father in distance than #10. The only way to know is to visually look at each location on the map until you find one on your route.

As previously stated, the Custom POIs and the built-in POIs are stored in completely different places on the unit. You have to search each database separately. Presumably each user knows what categories of Custom POIs they have loaded on their unit which should make the process easier. If you are looking for a Wal-Mart (along your route or otherwise) and you know that you have the Wal-Mart file loaded, you would go to your Custom POIs to search.

There is more info on this here:
http://www.poi-factory.com/node/932

If you scroll down, racqyteer has a post regarding "sorting".

Mortorcycle Mama: With all due respect, you missed the point of my reply. The "search along current route" feature does not work with custom POI's. If you perform that search, the results will be the closest 50 "custom POI" locations, it doesn't matter if they are along your route or not. Apparently, the "search along current route" only works with the built in POI's.