POI assistance requested

Hello,

I'm new to this forum and would greatly appreciate any help in resolving a problem I have been struggling with for some time now.

I have a list of over 400 locations in central Italy which I maintain on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The list includes latitude and longitude coordinates for each location. It is fairly easy to save this list as a CSV file and then, using a third-party program, Expert GPS, convert all of these coordinates into a GPX file that can be used on Garmin devices.

Loading the list on to my TomTom GO 930, however, has proven to be a great challenge.

First, I understand that only three fields can be shown as a POI on the TomTom -- longitude, latitude and name. Each entry must be separated by commas and the name of the location must be put between double quotes. (Unfortunately, it requires considerable manual effort simply to convert all of the information into this format.) After doing this, I saved the file as a .ov2 file, which I then copied into the Western European map section of my TomTom GO 930.

The problem is that I cannot then access any of these points of interest directly from the device while located in my home state of Minnesota. Therefore, I do not know whether or not any of these points of interest will be available when I travel to Italy later this month.

This is very frustrating, especially in contrast to how these exact same files are handled by my Garmin Nuvi. There, they show up as ?Favorites? and can easily be reviewed remotely at any time.

My whole purpose with this exercise is to be able to supply my friends who use a TomTom navigation device with a file that can be copied onto their device which would then give them the same points of interest I have on my Garmin.

Is there any way of accomplishing this goal? Do I need to hire a software developer to accomplish this task?

Thanks! As noted above, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Try tools here:
CSV to OV2 conversion tool - online POI data tools from GPS Data Team

Go to preferences -> manage maps -> switch map, and choose the european one.

You can then search for "POI near city" to confirm that they are loaded properly.