Industrial Units address entry

Joined
Nov 26, 2012
Messages
4
Location
United Kingdom
TomTom Model(s)
XL Live
This is my first post to this new forum area so please excuse me if I am missing the obvious!
As a courier my TomTom Live is my lifeline when I'm on the road. There are a couple of challenges I have with it however, and I wonder if anyone a little more experienced can help me? Here are my 3 questions.
1) Is there any way or specific screen to enter a unit and industrial estate address?
2) When not entering a post code, and just entering an address, what does the command 'crossing' refer to as I have never used it and wished it wasn't part of the set-up?
3) What is the file name for the contents of the favourites that I have stored on the unit as I would like to add my own and import them?

Thank you for taking the time to read this and hopefully respond with positive answers.
Trevor
New Forest
:thumb:
 
Hi and welcome...:)

I'll take your questions in turn:

1. I'm afraid not. The address database in the TomTom is simply not good enough (or large enough) to include all addresses, especially on private industrial estates.

In fact the way it works even on normal streets is that the positions of just a few specific house numbers are logged and then the system "guesses" the positions of the ones in between.
This can often lead to some quite large errors if the houses are not evenly spaced.
On industrial estates they usually just don't bother.

I find that searching by Postcode is usually the most useful method, but on an estate it can still be pretty vague and leave you searching along a couple of rows of units.


2. The TomTom system is all based around streets.
When you get to that "Crossing?" question, the TomTom is just asking "Can you narrow down the place you want to go to by telling me another road that crosses the one you've told me about?"
If that's not relevant to you then just ignore it, you don't HAVE to tell it a crossing (or a house number for that matter...). It just uses as much information as you give it.

3. The file name is called "MapSettings.cfg (or sometimes it's "mapsettings.cfg") and it's found in the map folder on the unit ("Europe", "Great Britain" etc. whatever yours is called).
If you want to back up your favourites, you can just copy it to your PC.

Now... there's a bit of a problem with exporting and importing it though.

As well as your Favourites, it also contains a lot of OTHER information (like your POI warning settings, your Home address and your recent destinations).

There are third-party programs which can read all the the addresses out of MapSettings.cfg (one good, free one is called POIEdit), and you can wade through them to find the ones that were Favourites. But I don't know of any programs that can save the file so that it's still readable by the TomTom.

But all is not lost...
What we normally suggest people do is to save all their important addresses as POIs instead, and to only use the Favourites as a quick "scratchpad" memory.

You can create as many POI categories as you like (one for friends and family, one for business contacts etc.) giving each category a name that's relevant to you; and you can then save as many addresses as you like in them
(if you're using Favourites there's a limit of about 48, if I remember correctly).

You can use POIs in just the same way as Favourites. Sometimes there are a couple more button presses involved, but you can do a few little tricks like putting an underscore character "_" at the beginning of a category name.
Then that POI category is always listed first, at the top of the alphabetical list, so you don;t have to scroll through the list to find it.

Your own POI categories are stored as standard ".ov2" files (again in the map folder) and programs like POIEdit and "Tyre" can read and write the files, and can do clever things like merge several of them together. It all works really well...

I still use Favourites for a "quick and dirty" temporary storage, but if it's an address I want to keep. I re-save them all into my POI categories.
(You can do that on the Browse map screen - Find Favourite, tap Blue "cursor" button at the bottom, save as POI).

That's a lot to take in all in one go... any questions, just ask!
 
Last edited:
Thank you

Now that was impressive help! I have printed a copy of your suggestion off and will put that into action later. I feel quite relieved that it wasnt me doing something wrong regarding the industrial estate addresses, I have always found this quite frustrating. Also I would reckon about 1 in 3 addresses that I enter via the postcode fail to recognise the house number as being correct. If, for example, I enter house number 252, the system responds with 'nearest number 248' and so I figure that this is close enough.

Now I can get help so easily I will be back with more challenges for you soon. Thank you again. Great help. :thumb:
 
@nodecks
Another thought for you. As Andy has suggested, creation of a custom POI file makes it easy to import and export. You can take the resulting *.ov2 file between units readily.

But may I also suggest that if you are visiting some of these industrial park locations very regularly, that you make a point of creating the POI entry while you visit them, using "My location" as the location (that's one of the options for marking a POI position)? That will assure that your unit has the exact location you wish for a particular business regardless of the address. That all assumes that the streets around the business park are within the map, of course.
 
Thank you

Thank you. When I remember to, I used to add the current location to the favourites but recent problems with the system resulted in me losing them all. I will try your idea when I am out and about again. I've never used the POIs so this is going to be a new learning curve for me.

I've downloaded the MyPOI Manager software and found it quite useful for inserting a few of my more popular locations as a POI. However I have found it quite a chore to locate them individually on the unit when installed. However, I'm sure as I become more familiar with the routine, it will become easier.

I'm looking forward to having a more in-depth browse around this forum later tonight.

Thank you for all your help and support to date. A special thanks the Jess G on the help-desk too for great service.

* * :wave: * *
 
Good point from canderson there...

In fact that's how I mark a lot of my personal places that I'll be back to.

For example, I've been doing a lot of "Dad's taxi service" for my daughter over the last few years. Whenever I take her to a new activity or friend's house I set the route the first time using whatever info I have... postcode. street address ... or just my daughter actually directing me to the house.

Once I've found the actual place and dropped her off, I then take a minute to add the exact location to my "Rose's Friends" POI.

The sequence of button presses is something like:
Change preferences / Manage POI / Add POI / Choose the "Friends" category / choose "My location" / Give it a name.
(not forgetting to add the friends name AND the house number into the POI name).

Then, when I get a phone call a few weeks later saying "Daaaaaad.. can you pick me up?" I can go straight there from a single name, AND I know which house number to bang on the door of.

Sweet.
 
A special thanks the Jess G on the help-desk too for great service.

Was that at TomTom itself?
Just to be clear... we're nothing to do with TomTom the company. We're just a bunch of owners and users like yourself.
 
Oh and one more thing....
I recommended the "POIEdit" software earlier.

Now you've just mentioned downloading the "MyPOIManager" software, and that rang a small alarm bell.

If you Google "POIEdit" it takes you straight to the POIEdit website, BUT they are currently advertising MyPOIManager right there on the home page.
It's a totally different program!

POIEdit itself is available to download from slightly deeper into their website at
http://www.poiedit.com/downloads.htm
Ignore the big flashy "Download me" button for MyPOIManager at the top, you need to look lower down.
 
Whoops!

Whoops. You are so right. I have indeed downloaded the incorrect program. And because of the methods they have used to promote it I am going to remove it from the computer forthwith and reinstall the correct one.

Jess G is one of the phone staff that helped me out last week and again today with a problem with my XL Live when an update corrupted the software.

::: UPDATE :::
I have just tried to download the software and sadly the page is timing out. I wonder if they are still in business?
 
No problems downloading it here. When you get the page to load, just grab the top (English) entry.
 

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