How to get POIs to work together?

[BrianSue]

POI questions – how do they work together?

We use Microsoft Streets & Trips in our motorhome to navigate all of North
America – US – Canada – Mexico. We have purchased a new version each year
since 2006. We now have 2010 and have loaded the Mega File from the Laptop
GPS World website. There are a number of other POI lists we would like to add
to our S&T and the Mega File but we can’t quite figure out how to do it. We
read the tips on the forum but some of the language is not in our limited
computer vocabulary. Some tutorials assume everyone reading them has risen to
a certain level of computer competence – but this is not always the case. Is
there some way some of you experts can get together and work up some sort of
very basic tutorial in laymen’s terms to help some of those of us who haven’t
yet attained your level of expertise with some of this stuff?

Some of what I know? With help from the Laptop GPS World forum I figured out
how to create my own POI list of all the campgrounds and RV parks in Mexico
using Lat/Lon numbers found in a Mexico Camping Guide by Mike & Terri Church.
I used Notepad to make a straight text file in .csv and formatted it like
this – NAME, LATITUDE, LONGITUDE – works great – we use Decimal Degrees
whenever possible.

But one of the tips I read says others format as – LATITUDE, LONGITUDE, NAME
– so it is not the same and I don’t know if these will work together and
don’t know how to make this work.

I recently discovered the POI Friend website because I was looking for Taco
John’s Restaurants and they said to go to that website to download the
location list. Great. Found it. I downloaded it to Notepad in .csv by
clicking on Garmin for the download. It shows up in Notepad as a file with
415 entries – the first entry looks like this on a single line….
-96.80886,43.51482,"Taco John`s #9918","6729 W 41st Street Sioux Falls SD
57106 [phone]" ………
Using the S&T 2010 Data Wizard I did as instructed and it appears that about
310 entries load but about 105 do not load. Then when I try to get them on my
S&T map I get nothing??? I did get the Taco John’s icon to work but it only
shows up in one location and it is not anywhere near any location in the file
that I am able to determine. Maybe different people use different formats or
something so they do not work together?

One thought I had was that maybe some of you experts on these different
websites could get together and somehow create one really huge Mega File with
some of the more useful POIs from the POI Friends website. Taco John’s would
be a good one from our point of view. Maybe a standardized format? Maybe a
tutorial for those creating POI lists so everyone works in the same way so
they can all work together? Maybe a basic easy to understand tutorial for
those less capable of understanding how these things work?

Here are some of the websites with various different things we are trying to
figure out how to get to work with our S&T 2010.

DISCOVERY OWNERS POIs
http://www.discoveryowners.com/cginfolinks.htm

http://www.discoveryowners.com/cginfo.htm

LAPTOP GPS WORLD WEBSITE
http://www.laptopgpsworld.com

http://www.laptopgpsworld.com/microsoft-streets-trips

MEGA FILE POI – I downloaded the .est version and it did not take more than
a couple minutes.
http://www.laptopgpsworld.com/microsoft-streets-trips/2595-poi-mega-file-pushpin-collections-truckers-rvers-other-travelers.html

STREETS & TRIPS support…
http://www.microsoft.com/streets/en-us/HelpAndHowTo.aspx

POI FRIEND
http://www.poifriend.com

[BrianSue]

I think I finally figured it out. I downloaded the file from the POI Friend
as a GPS Exchange which is a .gpx - I did NOT OPEN it but saved it to my
Streets & Trips folder. I did NOT click ZIP WITH ICON. Then in my Mega File
version of S&T I did the Import GPX file and it worked. I also got the icon
to work without any problem. I now show Taco John's in my Mega File folder
and can turn it on or off just like all the other files. I am not sure why it
worked now and not the other attempts but this time I clicked SAVE instead of
OPEN and I did not check ZIP so that could have something to do with it.

Post by BrianSue
POI questions – how do they work together?
We use Microsoft Streets & Trips in our motorhome to navigate all of North
America – US – Canada – Mexico. We have purchased a new version each year
since 2006. We now have 2010 and have loaded the Mega File from the Laptop
GPS World website. There are a number of other POI lists we would like to add
to our S&T and the Mega File but we can’t quite figure out how to do it. We
read the tips on the forum but some of the language is not in our limited
computer vocabulary. Some tutorials assume everyone reading them has risen to
a certain level of computer competence – but this is not always the case. Is
there some way some of you experts can get together and work up some sort of
very basic tutorial in laymen’s terms to help some of those of us who haven’t
yet attained your level of expertise with some of this stuff?
Some of what I know? With help from the Laptop GPS World forum I figured out
how to create my own POI list of all the campgrounds and RV parks in Mexico
using Lat/Lon numbers found in a Mexico Camping Guide by Mike & Terri Church.
I used Notepad to make a straight text file in .csv and formatted it like
this – NAME, LATITUDE, LONGITUDE – works great – we use Decimal Degrees
whenever possible.
But one of the tips I read says others format as – LATITUDE, LONGITUDE, NAME
– so it is not the same and I don’t know if these will work together and
don’t know how to make this work.
I recently discovered the POI Friend website because I was looking for Taco
John’s Restaurants and they said to go to that website to download the
location list. Great. Found it. I downloaded it to Notepad in .csv by
clicking on Garmin for the download. It shows up in Notepad as a file with
415 entries – the first entry looks like this on a single line….
-96.80886,43.51482,"Taco John`s #9918","6729 W 41st Street Sioux Falls SD
57106 [phone]" ………
Using the S&T 2010 Data Wizard I did as instructed and it appears that about
310 entries load but about 105 do not load. Then when I try to get them on my
S&T map I get nothing??? I did get the Taco John’s icon to work but it only
shows up in one location and it is not anywhere near any location in the file
that I am able to determine. Maybe different people use different formats or
something so they do not work together?
One thought I had was that maybe some of you experts on these different
websites could get together and somehow create one really huge Mega File with
some of the more useful POIs from the POI Friends website. Taco John’s would
be a good one from our point of view. Maybe a standardized format? Maybe a
tutorial for those creating POI lists so everyone works in the same way so
they can all work together? Maybe a basic easy to understand tutorial for
those less capable of understanding how these things work?
Here are some of the websites with various different things we are trying to
figure out how to get to work with our S&T 2010.
DISCOVERY OWNERS POIs
http://www.discoveryowners.com/cginfolinks.htm
http://www.discoveryowners.com/cginfo.htm
LAPTOP GPS WORLD WEBSITE
http://www.laptopgpsworld.com
http://www.laptopgpsworld.com/microsoft-streets-trips
MEGA FILE POI – I downloaded the .est version and it did not take more than
a couple minutes.
http://www.laptopgpsworld.com/microsoft-streets-trips/2595-poi-mega-file-pushpin-collections-truckers-rvers-other-travelers.html
STREETS & TRIPS support…
http://www.microsoft.com/streets/en-us/HelpAndHowTo.aspx
POI FRIEND
http://www.poifriend.com