Troubleshooting POI Proximity Alerts

Eventually, after quite a bit of research, I found the answer myself.

For the benefit of anyone who finds themselves frustrated with Custom Points of Interest (POI's)
because they don't get the alerts they expect after carefully doing everything that seemed to be required.....

VERY few documents had the answer I was looking for included....but here was the solution in my case

The ONE thing I wasn't quite grasping, for whatever reason, was that POI alerts only work for POIs that are DIRECTLY ON THE ROUTE IN QUESTION.

In my case I was wanting alerts for Rest Areas that are positioned slightly OFF the routes. For example, several hundred yards off the Interstate.
No matter what I did, I could not get alerts for these Rest Areas until I did the following.....

Added the word "TourGuide" to the name of the CSV or GPX file I was uploading

So this didn't work....
Florida_Rest_Areas.csv

But THIS did...
Florida_Rest_Areas_TourGuide.csv

Note that TourGuide must be spelled EXACTLY as shown because the case is vital.

The TourGuide keyword, when included in the name of the file, changes the way the Nuvi handles the POI's.
When loading the file and the word "TourGuide" is included, this instructs the Nuvi to detect the POIs by Distance, from a center point based on the number of feet you specify,
REGARDLESS of whether the POI is directly ON THE ROUTE or not.

So, in my case, the Rest Areas were never associated with the roadway (Interstate in this case) as are street addresses and therefore were not
considered on the Route and therefore did not generate alerts.

But after changing the name of my upload main file (CSV or GPX containing the Points), to contain the keyword "TourGuide", this told the Nuvi to generate an alert
when ever the PROXIMITY to that point was at the distance in feet I selected during the MANUAL uploading of the file to the Nuvi.

Here is a link to the site where I ultimately found the answer I needed.....
http://brillharts.com/GarminAlerts/

This hard to find bit of information cost me a ton of time and several headaches.
Hopefully years from now when I've forgotten this and get a new GPS I will do a Google search and find this post.

As you're finding a lot of Garmin stuff is poorly documented or completely undocumented. This is nothing new.

Fortunately the internet is a great source of info--you just have to find it ;)

PS: I was unaware of the "TourGuide" suffix. My POI's are on roads but that feature might come in useful.

You are so right.

StuartMW, AFAIK, the only way to get alerts for Rest Areas would be with TourGuide since Rest Area POI files usually place them in their correct geographic location whixh is not on a roadway or by address. They may be a special case. But Im not totally sure about that.

I find the TourGuide feature especially handy for off road stuff or alerts for scenic spots and attractions that don't have street addresses.

You may find some of the info here useful, it was written a while back and some may no longer apply though:

http://home.comcast.net/~ghayman3/garmin.gps/pagepoi.htm#pagepoitext