How to delete all waypoints ("Favoriten" in German)

Deleting the locations file does not remove the entries. The entries are stored in memory. You can delete them individually thought the UI, but this is pain if you have a lot. I have posted a FIT file on the forum that will delete all the entries for you. You just place the file in the Garmin\NewFiles folder.

A search should find the thread, but here is the file.



You really don't need to be loading waypoints as the Edge does not use them for navigation.

frei newsham

Thanks for your reply, Alan. Cleaning the waypoint folder works as you said and this is a progress. I bow my head, master. :-)

A related item: Given a "Locations.fit" file with a few manually created entries. When I save this "Locations.fit" on my notebook for backup and then drop it into the "NewFiles" folder for recovery, the names of the entries appear cut off after 15 characters, e.g. "Bormio, Ht. Baita Clementi" (a hotel) merely reads "Bormio, Ht. Bai". Again this is annoying and when you travel a lot, you don't want to fix a long list of items by hand. Is there a workaround to save and recover the entries completely?

You are stuck with only 15 letters. There is no option to change it.

Let this be true. Then Garmin took a very foresightful approach! Is there a reference to the manufacturers technical specification that proves that we are really restricted to 15 digits? Why can we type much more than 15 characters (even though the length on the touch screen is also bounded but wide enough) when the remainder is cut off without comment? Is there really no regulating screw that enables us to adjust the number of digits that are written to "Locations.fit"?

There may well be a difference between the length that can be stored and what the UI will display. The FIT file will contain a definition record specifying how long the description for a location can be.

Looking at the definition record the location name is limited to 16 characters. The name of a course is limited to 50 characters in the FIT file.

Let this be true. Then Garmin took a very foresightful approach! Is there a reference to the manufacturers technical specification that proves that we are really restricted to 15 digits? Why can we type much more than 15 characters (even though the length on the touch screen is also bounded but wide enough) when the remainder is cut off without comment? Is there really no regulating screw that enables us to adjust the number of digits that are written to "Locations.fit"?

Just as a slight clarification to dpawlyk's answer - if you are importing, then items will truncate to 15 characters (the same is true for Course names as well). But you can then edit the names one at a time, direct on the 820, to utilise more characters. Tedious I know.

Can't confirm for Location names, but with Courses, if you re-import an existing course (perhaps you've made a slight route adjustment), it will overwrite with the 15 character limit, meaning back into the 820 to manually edit the name once again...

Just as a slight clarification to dpawlyk's answer - if you are importing, then items will truncate to 15 characters (the same is true for Course names as well). But you can then edit the names one at a time, direct on the 820, to utilise more characters. Tedious I know.

On the ancient 800, you can change the names of locations to be longer than 15 characters. You can't make the course names longer.

It's sufficiently tedious that it's not practically any different from not being able to edit the name to be longer.

Thank you all for your replies. The Edges short limit of characters for the location name is really a pity (among many other stupid things). Originally, I wanted, on the long run, to build a directory of locations, ideally generated from a text file or database under version control and backup. Each entry should tell me a geographic note, a type and the name of the location, e.g. "Bormio, Ht. Baita Clementi" (a hotel), "Heidelberg, Rst. Goldener Stern" (a greek restaurant), "Wien, Sgt. Stephansdom" (a famous cathedral). Given, that maintaining the data in a simple format and convert it to a .fit file on demand worked, I could split the data in several files and just upload the one I needed. But according to how things look like at the moment, I can just use a 15 digit code and memorize the expansions via file charts or write codes and expansions down in a booklet I must not forget at home when travelling. More over, systematic maintenance of locations in a text file or database is presumably useless when I can not convert the data to a .fit file. But I don't give up hope, that there's a programming library for this conversion or that .fit files can be replaced by .gpx files. I don't know how much gpsbabel can do. This will take time to find out. The locations are just one leaf in the overloaded menu structure of the Edges configuration tree, but they are a representative for my recurring experience (at the time of this writing I spent four month and more than seven thousand kilometers with my Edge 820): From my point of view the Edge 820 is a very expensive childrens toy, but nothing more. I'm disappointed!

... that .fit files can be replaced by .gpx files.

You can populate the locations using a gpx file (with waypoints). You don't have to use a fit file for this.

There are other ways of loading "locations".

http://www.garmin.com/us/maps/poiloader

(I believe the proximity alert stuff does not work on the newer units.)

Thank you all for your replies. The Edges short limit of characters for the location name is really a pity (among many other stupid things). Originally, I wanted, on the long run, to build a directory of locations, ideally generated from a text file or database under version control and backup. Each entry should tell me a geographic note, a type and the name of the location, e.g. "Bormio, Ht. Baita Clementi" (a hotel), "Heidelberg, Rst. Goldener Stern" (a greek restaurant), "Wien, Sgt. Stephansdom" (a famous cathedral).

It might be useful to understand how you use this information. There might be ways of doing what you want without doing exactly what you are doing.

I recently discovered that the folder "Favoriten" (german) brims over with useless entries and there seems to be no method to delete the whole content at once. Each time I upload a .gpx file, say a section of the route "Atlantic-Black Sea", hundreds of waypoints pour in the folder "Favoriten" uncontrolled and have to be removed individually. Obviously most way points are not worth saving in this folder.

The basic problem is that the gpx file you are loading isn't really appropriate for loading to the Garmins. There are multiple ways of avoiding loading the waypoints.

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...are so deeply buried in the menu structure that more than fourty years of life experience, a technical university degree and twenty years of software development, system and network administration does not suffice to find the setting. I have accepted that I have burned 400 Euro for nothing, since I have no other choice. But the behavior of the edge 820 is an insult for each of us, able to count to three.

The locations are just one leaf in the overloaded menu structure of the Edges configuration tree, but they are a representative for my recurring experience (at the time of this writing I spent four month and more than seven thousand kilometers with my Edge 820): From my point of view the Edge 820 is a very expensive childrens toy, but nothing more. I'm disappointed!

Many people are able to use these devices without this.

No device is going to work for everybody. It's possible that it isn't the device for you.