CSV POI and excel - help with Navman

[Adek]

I have a Navman PiN 570 and I've been trying to import some POI files into the SmartST software.
The camera files from here are fine as are some others I have found but my problem is that whilst there are quite a few tomtom OV2 files out there and similar variants, I can't find convert them properly into CSV format.

I have found this before with MS Excel, in that what you think will be a CSV file turns out to export in not quite the right way, if you use notepad, then that's fine, but you can't seriously edit files with that software.

So here is my problem if I have an excel sheet with Long, Lat, name and then export as CSV, then the name cells do not export in a
<,"name title"> format that SmartST needs, either you get a number of "" added or none at all.

Anyone got a foolproof way of forcing excel to export into a format that Navman can read?


any help would be great.

[Tim Buxton]

Oldie's POIConverter (search for it in the Downloads section) does exactly what it says on the tin. You can convert .ov2 files into .csv format. It does add , "" to the end, but these are ignored by the Navman POIEditor and are easily stripped out by the basic editing facilities of Notepad anyway.

Then you only have to add a ; to the beginning of the top line of the resultant .csv file and you're away with the mixer. Incidentally, if you click on my WWW button, you will be taken to a website (not mine) where there are Navman-ready POI files.
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Tim

[Adek]

Thanks Tim,

I have tried that POI converter, maybe I have used the wrong CSV format, there seem to be a couple of different ones listed, so I'll look again at this conversion.

The website you give does have some nice add-on POI's I have already used the BP garage one from this site- as you say goes into Navman from there with no problem.

My problem is also that I would like to create my own POI file for work, and there would be something like 1000 entries, so even simple editing in notepad would take an age, it is far easier for me to generate a dump from my database into excel and edit this. but then I just can't seem to get it into the navman POI editor. Excel seems to leave in something not quite right. So it looks like I'll have to have a play with a field merge and macro in excel to fudge it...

I would have to say that the Navman software makes POI's just a little more difficult than it should be- I find the desktop version is quite flakey in communicating with the PDA, but that's the only way to download them onto the unit. Still can't have everything, and it keeps me out of trouble playing with this all.
A project for the christmas break I think.

Adek

[Tim Buxton]

Ah yes, I forgot. Oldie is so good that he provided various .csv output formats. You need to convert to the Autoroute .csv type.

BP, eh? I wise choice, Sir, as it's one of mine. 8)

Can'tyou create your POI file in Excel and then re-edit it in Notepad? All you ned to do is get the format right at the end, which is

Lon, Lat, "Name"

Excel appears to put double quotes around the "Name" field, which throws the Navman POIEditor.

Yes, Navman have been made aware that their choice of Custom POI transfer isn't the best by any means. Hopefully it wil be corrected in future versions, but it took them three releases of SmartST to actually provide the function. One step at a time...... :D
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Tim

[Adek]

Thanks Tim,

I'll try the autoroute CSV version hopefully it will be more successful.

I found with Excel that putting in a comma in the name cell before the text should produce the single " ..." speech marks, but then it leaves in the comma so ",xxxx" not sure if this may work with Navman , hope so but lets see.

Adek

[mugwump]

The following macro seems to work, you need to select the cells you want to export then run the macro. It creates a file called file.csv in the root of C:, you can of course change this in the code.

Not the most elegant soution but it works for me.......

Sub Export()
Dim r As Range, c As Range
Dim sTemp As String

Open "c:\file.csv" For Output As #1
For Each r In Selection.Rows
sTemp = ""
For Each c In r.Cells
sTemp = sTemp & c.Text & Chr(44)
Next c

'Get rid of trailing commas
While Right(sTemp, 1) = Chr(44)
sTemp = Left(sTemp, Len(sTemp) - 1)
Wend
Print #1, sTemp
Next r
Close #1
End Sub
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Apologies to all my supporting users, the http://ukpostcodes.boldlygoingnowhere.org/ postcode converter has now been retired.
The ubiquity of full postcode lookups has made it somewhat redundant. I still have the code if anyone needs it.

[Adek]

thanks mugwump, I'll give this a try also. This was the sort of thing I had in mind I was going to have to write.


Adek

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