The Webs Best Camping Guide

In order to load custom POI (Point of interest) files onto your Garmin GPS unit you will first need Garmin’s POI loader. The software is Free and can be downloaded from the Garmin website (Garmin.com).

You should be aware that custom POIs do not behave the same as built-in POIs. Custom POIs will not show up in the category listing such as Restaurants or shopping. Plus you cannot search for custom POIs with the text search feature. To access your custom POIs you will need to hit: Where to/Extras/Custom POIs. Then you will be able to select or scroll thru listings by proximity to your current location.

The POI loader software will load files in CSV or GPX format. Copy any files that you want to load to a new directory. Each time you run POI Loader it will overwrite all the custom POIs that are currently loaded. So make sure that all the files you want to have loaded when you are done are in this directory. The POI loader will set up categories for each file with the file name (less the extension) as the category name, so you might want to rename the files to something easy to understand.

Now that you are set up, transfering the POI files is pretty simple.

* Connect your GPS unit to your computer
* Start POI Loader
* Select your GPS Device
* Choose ‘Install new custom POIs …’
* Browse to the directory you created
* Use ‘Express Mode’ unless you are setting up custom alerts
* Click ‘next’ and POI loader will take a minute or so to transfer the Data to your GPS
* When sucessfully completed POI loader will tell you that it installed xxxx points of interest.