Creating Trips - Do you have to have Lat & Lon for waypoints?

You can do an address search on you Garmin device. If the address can be found, the required coordinates will be included in the waypoint. The actual address search process varies depending on the Garmin model you have. Sometimes when the Garmin device is unable locate a specific address, you need to change something in your search criteria (like eliminating the city, changing the abbreviation for Street, Drive, Road, etc.)

The details vary a bit depending on what model of GPS you are talking about, or what trip-planning software on a PC you plan to use, but generally speaking the trip creation process wants to build trips from already-created waypoints (or favorites, or places, or ... whatever name is used in a particular environment).

So, regardless of whether your starting point is an address or lat/lon coordinates, usually you need to attempt a lookup (lat/lon will always succeed, address may not), and if successful do something to save your finding as a waypoint or favorite (with a name you will be able to find later).

Generally, then, when you are building a trip you sequentially specify already created waypoints.

Of course, if your environment already knows of the location because of a prepopulated list from provided mapping information, or POI files from this website, or ... You can skip the step of building your own, but as you specified that what you had was name and address, I imagine this is not the case of current interest to you.

Thanks Alan.
When importing a CSV file contining many addresses but no Lat Lon data, how is that imported into Basecamp?

If you are importing addresses in a .csv file, you will need to have the coordinates included. You can use a geocoding utility like GPS Visualizer to add the coordinates to the address list.

When GeoCoding CSV files, does it usually take a long time?
I have a file with about 60 addresses loaded into GPSVisualizer (with an api key) but it seems nothing is happening except the button says CANCEL GEOCODING

But it's been 15 minutes or more now

It has been a long time (several years) since I have used GPS Visualizer, but I don't think it should take that long. Sorry I can't be of more help. Maybe someone who has more recent experience with GPS Visualizer (or a different geocoder) will respond and offer some help.

Thanks Alan,
Going on two hours now...still says CANCEL GEOCODING.....

I don't think it's working.

https://getlatlong.net/

That site doesn't seem to have a way to batch geocode a long list of addresses. Just one at a time.

Found this site and tried it out....

https://csv2geo.com/status_tasks

It was $5.00 to GeoCode a list of 180 addresses

GPSVisualizer doesn't seem to work for me. I tried Google with an API key but it just hangs indefinitely.

My Suspicion is it's not GPSVisualization.com but is a Google issue because down below it keeps saying Google Poliy Does Not allow results as a text file...

Have you tried outputting as a GPX file, instead.

Phranc: That won't work, all he has is a Comma Seperated list of addresses saved as a CSV file. No Lat or Lon in the file. He could have had this solved already if he would have input the addresses into MapSource or BaseCamp and saved the waypoints. This is not a file of thousands, so it's doable.

I understand, but in light of the Google Error message about not allowing Text file output, couldn't a GPX file be the output then jump over to GPS Babel and convert the GPX back to a text file?

I doubt it. Seems like the Google error, maybe similar to the error we get with POIeditor now, will not let anything happen.

Key the addresses into Basecamp or Mapsource one by one.

If you are going to abandon the batch input and enter the addresses individually, I would recommend using Google Earth. That way, you can visually verify the location and obtain accurate coordinates.

For example, if one of your locations happens to be a store in a shopping mall, you can enter the coordinates of the mall entrance instead of the actual store location. This will avoid the possibility your GPS giving you an inaccurate route.