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New to Garmin and BaseCamp, need advice

Former Member
Former Member
For several years I used a Magellan GPS, which came with free Windows software. In this software I was able to type in an address, give it a name, and sync it to my connected GPS within about 2 minutes.

The Magellan finally gave up the ghost, so I bought a new Garmin Nuvi 2597 a couple of months ago, and after some limited research downloaded BaseCamp, believing after my research I might be able to perform the same task of entering and syncing addresses as I did on the old device.

Every attempt to "find" an address, even my own home which has been here for 15 years, ends in "no results." I finally clicked the question mark icon next to the message after several frustrating attempts and saw a message "this map does not support address searches."

My map is the one that came with the device, the CN North America NT 2015.30.

Am I seriously going to need to purchase another map just to make it easier to add addresses to my Garmin? This doesn't seem right to me.

Is there another piece of software I can download from the Garmin site that will do what I'm looking for?

Thanks!
  • 0
    The map on your nuvi will, but have you selected that map in Basecamp? Connect your nuvi then ensure the map shows under Maps in the toolbar and is selected.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    BaseCamp only comes with a basic "Global Basemap" that has very little detail. If you connect your 2597 to your PC and then start BaseCamp it'll see the detail maps on your unit. The should result in better search resultx. As an aside the Find functionality in BaseCamp is a "work in progress" and therefore has some issues.

    BTW if your 2597 has a lifetime map update subscription (LM or LMT suffix in the model name) you can load maps to you hard drive when performing a map update.
  • 0
    As an alternative, after you install the Communicator plugin, you can use the Mapquest web site to send addresses (and routes) to your nuvi.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    Yes, I'm a new user as well - both to Garmin Nuvi and Basecamp.
    The Nuvi GPS unit has the big map database loaded into it's internal memory and has to be plugged into Basecamp in order of Basecamp to "see" the larger map and associated details.

    Even so, I've encountered the same issues as yourself - it can't find a specific address, even an address in existence for many years.
    But when I manually zoom to the address location on the map, Basecamp can then "see" the street for which I searched.
    Basecamp requires a certain type of input - I'm not sure precisely what though.

    For example, first try;
    Search for Black Canyon Gunnison National Park
    Then try: Black Canyon

    One would think that the first try would find the correct location, no?
  • 0
    Not necessarily. For address search, you never know how Garmin has the names coded, abbreviated, etc., and it is not consistent across all addresses. Because of this, the "less is more" rule often replies. Put in just enough info so that the search can give you a list of matching addresses to choose from.

    Edit: spelling correction
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    @bighatnohorse,

    No.

    There is a general rule when doing computer searches to start more general instead of starting with really specific detailed searches. This applies to search engines like Google as well as Garmin map searches. There are a bunch of things that can go wrong with very detailed search requests. They mostly have to do with spelling. Either you spell something wrong or the data you are searching is spelled differently when it was input to the database.

    As you see, it's usually better to start more general and then narrow the search after you see the results.

    ...ken...
  • 0
    Above is good advice about general vs specific searches. That said, however, when I put "Black Canyon Gunnison National Park" in the find field, it finds "Black Canyon-Gunnison National Park" just fine. This with BC 4.4.6 and NA maps 2015.2 installed on the PC. So there may be other issues here for bighatnohorse. It should work.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    Yes, I pasted it in the Search box at the top right without the hyphen and the top two results are "Black Canyon-Gunnison National Park, Montrose, CO" with the hyphen, using CNNA 2015.2 and Basecamp 4.4.6. I'm impressed because Garmin's search routines will usually fail when there is that much difference (eg. hyphen versus no hyphen).

    ...ken...
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    Same results, hyphen or no hyphen, with 4.4.4 and CNNA 2015.3. Not what I expected either.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    FYI the turn-off (off US-50) to the park is at N38.48842 W107.74068. The park entrance (where you pay) is at N38.54119 W107.69325. The visitors center is at N38.55489 W107.68620.

    http://www.nps.gov/blca/

    (Yes I've been to the park--quite impressive).