Nope. Just no. How is it possible that after EIGHT YEARS of people asking how to import data, does Garmin still not provide proper instructions/ability?

1916691 11 days ago

I've had a FitBit for a long time. I don't want to lose all that data. Ostensibly, Garmin allows you to import FitBit data.

Holy crap is that not true. The instructions simply do not work. After scouring through forum posts from 8 years ago, I recognize that Garmin doesn't like the format that FitBit exports. Now, I'm a smart guy... I could write a script to reformat the THOUSANDS of files to the format Garmin likes, but:

1) It is only ever going to work for a tiny subset of the data: steps, weight, a little bit more. No sleep, no HRV, no heart rate (I think)... why the *** not? That's all data Garmin tracks!

2) For some stupid reason, it will only take daily totals, not minute-by-minute data. That loss of granularity is concerning for anyone tracking trends.

I hate that FitBit was sold to Google and Google promptly discontinued everything good and soldier on with their < 24 hour battery life Pixel crap... but the data is far more important to me than the actual device. FAR more.

So I have to return this otherwise very nice Garmin watch and "downgrade" to a discontinued FitBit while I wait for the Pixel to have a reasonable battery.

OR until Garmin understands that some people really value their data. (psst... Garmin should do. That stuff's valuable)

0 trux 11 days ago

As for importing the weight, the following format works (it is the original FitBit file format, not the one Google introduced later):

Body
Date,Weight,BMI,Fat
"2022-11-03","71.6","22.6","14.4"

There can be multiple lines of data, but the first 2 header lines appear just once. Use a plain-text editor such as Notepad for creating the file. Do not use any rich-text editors like Word or Wordpad. And avoid Excel.

As for importing other data, there are some examples on the forum too.