Problems importing courses

I have seen threads here which say the name must be unique in the first xx characters, but I have not seen what xx is.  I have also seen mention that there is a limit to the number of courses the 830 can hold, probably in the area of 100.  I import courses the same way you describe, but have not seen a problem.  Although I usually only have a few courses on the 830 at at time. 

I think xx is 15 but I wouldn’t swear to it.  It looks like the name is truncated to 15 characters in the file.   With the 800, that would cause the device to compare the course as the same so it wouldn’t copy the new one.   I’ve also seen the issue with a max number of courses.  I clear them every week so I just have 5 or 6 max. 

My friend with a 1000 had a similar problem linking a course yesterday.  He also saved it with a shorter name with no spaces and it then worked.  

just noticing that the ones that work seem to have <CourseNameRef> tag in the XML file with a sub field ID with the course name. The ones that don’t work don’t have the course name ref filed and do have an id field but the id is the date.   Not sure if this is the issue or what causes it at any rate. 

DuaneHebert said:

I tried to manually copy them to the new files folder and on restart they disappeared from the new files folder but didn’t show up in courses. 

This means the Garmin can't convert the file.  "Deleting" the file first keeps the Garmins from repeatedly trying to convert bad files (which could keep it from rebooting).

Are you importing as fit?

It's very odd that a RWGPS route has a problem, It's probably the most popular website for planning routes and has been the case for years.

Maybe, provide a link to the RWGPS route.

DuaneHebert said:

With the 800, that would cause the device to compare the course as the same so it wouldn’t copy the new one.  

No, the 800 didn't work that way.

All of the Garmins work the same way (some of the newer ones might look at more of the name).

If the first 15 are the same, the units will overwrite the existing course.

It's very common to upload updates to the same route. It would be quite annoying/useless to block people from doing that.

Only looking at the first 15 chars is another issue. People probably don't want that to happen.

SteveRodkey said:

I have also seen mention that there is a limit to the number of courses the 830 can hold, probably in the area of 100. 

I think it's 200 (I think that's the limit for all of the Edges >= 520).

Yes, you are right about the last one overwriting.  

Here's a link to the file that I think was broken.  I exported it as a tcx file when trying to load it.https://ridewithgps.com/trips/38367632

I loaded the FIT and TCX version to a 1030+. Both loaded fine.

I used my IQ app to load the FIT file (the RWGPS app isn't available for the 1030+) but that shouldn't matter (the apps use the same download functionality provided by Garmin).

If it was a general problem, I'd expect RWGPS would have shaken it out (it's a very popular website).

dpawlyk said:

Both loaded fine.

Same here. Just make sure you choose TCX Course, because I think the default is TCX History, which won't work.

Definitely, don't use the "TCX history" option (it doesn't work).

That option is meant to produce an activity file. I think RWGPS provides that option for activities ("trips"), you've uploaded to RWGPS (so, you can load the activity into other programs).

Just as an FYI, there isn't much of a difference between an activity (recorded ride) file and a course file. So, it's kind of interesting the history file doesn't work (there's not a strong reason why it shouldn't work).

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There should be no difference between using a TCX (course) and a FIT (course!) file. Not sure why people would use TCX over FIT (unless they wanted to manipulate the text file).

Thanks. Not sure what the deal is then.  I typically don’t export the files.  I pin them and then use the ConnectIQ app to download them.  I only manually exported it when that didn’t work. 

Exporting the files is the common thing to do. That is, it's a "well exercised" option.