Finding Cities

Try typing the name of the city, where you can pick center of map or selection.

So I'd end up with Find Cities Near Hell? I'd already tried that and Basecamp told me 'Invalid Location'. (I had that in my initial post at some point but I must have decided to remove it for some inexplicable reason.) I just tried it again with Hell, London and Hastings all with the same result.

Edit: Then I shut down Basecamp, restarted it and tried again. This time it worked! I've no idea what was wrong but I don't care as long as it works now. Thanks, I knew it had to be something daft.

Kevin

If it comes back as an 'invalid location' are you sure it's actually shown on the map? Whenever I do a search provided the city is listed I simply enter the city name (or part of it) and I get a list in the right hand pane of all cities containing that word string.

Edit: Just seen you've solved it and posted as such as I was posting this, glad it's sorted.

Sorry, this is a long post.

There's definitely something not right.

I now want to find a post code. I'm not entirely sure how I should do that but based on how I find a city I put Find Address Near <postcode>. 'Invalid Location'. I also try various combinations of Near with <postcode> in Containing; no joy.

Hmmm. Ok, let's have another go at trying to find Hell. Find Cities Near Hell. Wait for the dropdown... ... ... 90 seconds passes, no dropdown... ...press <tab> - 'Invalid Location' (which is probably correct as the dropdown qualifies 'Hell' with more information).

Please see attached screen shots.

Shut down Basecamp, open Basecamp, no difference.

I then tried it on a different machine and saw similar results. So I sat down and tried to understand what is happening.

The piece of code that is monitoring the keyboard input for Near seems a bit hit and miss.

I type 'Hell' and the dropdown appears offering me Hell-Bourg, Salazie, FRA, I accept that to simulate a mistake.

I clear the box and type 'Hell'. As I'm typing the dropdown appears momentarily but by the time I've finished it has disappeared. I'm screwed.

I clear the box and type it again. This time it works.

I try this several times. Sometimes I get the dropdown offering me place names that start with 'Hell', other times I get a much shorter selection that only offers me places I've selected before that begin with 'Hell' plus 'Centre of Map' and 'Centre of Selection', sometimes I get no dropdown and it completes the box with a place name I've selected before, sometimes I get no dropdown at all, only what I've typed remains in the box and this of often but not always accompanied by the 'Invalid Location' box.

On earlier tests I realised the text entry box wasn't being completely cleared so for the tests above I made sure it really was empty.

I was going to uninstall and reinstall but I can repeat this on the other machine so I doubt that's going to achieve anything.

I didn't ever figure out how to find a postcode.

Kevin

If it comes back as an 'invalid location' are you sure it's actually shown on the map? Whenever I do a search provided the city is listed I simply enter the city name (or part of it) and I get a list in the right hand pane of all cities containing that word string.

Edit: Just seen you've solved it and posted as such as I was posting this, glad it's sorted.

When you say 'shown on the map' do you mean visible on the screen? If you do then no, the place I'm looking for may not be on the visible part of the map.

As you'll have seen from my subsequent post it doesn't appear to be sorted unfortunately. If no-one else can repeat this then maybe there's a clash with other software on the PCs as both the machines I tried have a similar range of software installed.

Kevin

Hell does indeed exist :).

I'm still trying to digest the news that postcode searching may not be supported in Basecamp.Isn't that a fairly fundamental requirement? It's supported by everything else I can think of including Garmin SatNavs themselves. That pretty much makes Basecamp a useless product for UK use where if I'm searching for an address I will always use a postcode (as, I am sure, do most people). Thanks for pointing me to that thread.

If that really is the current situation I guess it's time to put Basecamp back in the box and go back to Mapsource. Shame really as I'd invested quite a lot of time in it this time and was convinced I'd finally made the transition.

Kevin

Well perhaps Falagar will chime in with some news ;)

Postal code search is unfortunately not yet supported in BaseCamp. We know that this is very important to some of our users. So we plan on implementing this in a future feature release.

And just in general, the search functionality is definitely something we'd like to improve a lot.

BaseCamp currently does not support finding by postal code. We definitely plan on improving the find functionality. <snip>

I appreciate the response Falagar but does the quote above sound familiar? You said that in January 2011, nearly 15 months ago, so I won't hold my breath.

The OP in the 'Postcodes' thread had it right IMO BTW. Mapsource/Basecamp is Garmin's USP; it's why I buy Garmin products. If you screw this up there is no reason not to use Autoroute/Streets and Trips or similar and put the output on a competing SatNav.

I can see Basecamp has potential but I'm already going through hoops to work round what I consider to be an idiosyncratic database system so until there is a release that addresses fundamental issues like searching I shall leave you in peace and go back to Mapsource.

Kevin