Adding "Notes" to GPX file before Import

[BuckyE]

Dear Friends,

How would/could I open a GPX file in a word processor, and add text that would be Imported into the Notes section for a PE Pin?

Thanks for any advice.

Bucky

[jsgblom]

You can edit a GPX file in any common text editor.

To add notes to a pin (=waypoint):

<wpt lat=”46.6555045″ lon=”13.0199147″><name>Test gpx export</name><desc>Blah die blah note.</desc></wpt>

or with a more readable layout (and with added symbol):

<wpt lat=”46.6555045″ lon=”13.0199147″>
<name>Test gpx export</name>
<desc>Blah die blah note.</desc>
<sym>marker-pin-sleep</sym>
</wpt>

(You could also use a CSV format which might be easier to edit multiple lines in an excel sheet for example.)

[jsgblom]

If you want to mass-edit pins already in PE you can export them (either in GPX or CSV format), edit them and import them back into PE. When you are only concerned about pins then CSV format is the way to go! A GPX export is also exporting the routes and tracks! And the pins are easier to edit in programs like excel / open office / numbers. After editing you will have to save as CSV again. Make a backup of the original GPX or CSV before you start editing the file!

Also, be aware that the pins will lose any assigned group. The import will create a new group with all the pins from the CSV file.

The problem with exporting and importing GPX/CSV back into PE is that you will end up with duplicate pins. In this case you will have to remove all your pins in PE before importing them back into PE.

BTW: when exporting and importing Pocket Earth Archives you won’t end up with duplicates! This is one of the advantages of Pocket Earth Archive compared to GPX/CSV. (But you can’t edit pocket earth archive files.)

[GeoMagik]

@BuckyE:

@jsgblom pretty much said it all already, just want to re-iterate about the duplicate pin thing. Best option is to make a group of pins in PE, and export it as CSV, modify then re-import. There will be duplicates but they will be organized into 2 groups, once you see that the imported group looks correct, you can easily delete the original group to remove the duplicates.

Regarding GPX, please note that GPX is always imported as a GPS Track (this is what GPX format was designed to handle). If you export a PE Route as GPX, it will import as a GPS Track also, and thus loose a lot of information, including the turn-by-turn driving ability.

[jsgblom]

@GeoMagik: It would be handy if you could also export a group as CSV (pins only).

[BuckyE]

Dear Friends,

Wow! You guys are great. I kind of asked the wrong question. But I got good answers, and figured out how to do all kinds of stuff. So this is fantastic!

I have several GPX files that are being imported as tracks, which is good. That’s what I want. (Tracks of trail hikes, downloaded from several web sites. And it’s fascinating to see how well the Tracks match up with trails shown in PE. What a terrific system!)

I wanted to add the trail descriptions from the web sites (and maybe other information) to the Notes section of the PE Track. I realize I could do all this on my iPad by copying and pasting, but sometimes it’s handier/faster to work on my desktop computer.

From @jsgblom ‘s answer, I tried pasting a <desc>blah blah poohbah</desc> in the “header” of the GPX, just after the <name>, and lo and behold, it worked a treat!

I also discovered that I could edit the GPX <name> to be more usefully descriptive, rather than doing that to the PE Track. (I hate editing text on the iPad. It is so clumsy.)

Excellent!

[BuckyE]

And, to @jgsblom,

Thank you immensely. You’re a good friend. You might be amused by http://pocketearth.com/forums/topic/importing-csvs-broken-for-me/ where I wrestled for weeks with creating/editing CSVs.

I don’t have Excel on my Macintosh, so I was trying to use Apache Open Office to edit the files in a spreadsheet. That had some –for me– insuperable glitches/defaults, so I switched over to the Database program FileMaker Pro, with which I am much more familiar. After a lot of munging around, that worked very well.

Since then, I have been editing downloaded CSVs, and creating databases from scratch that I then export as CSVs for PE. What fun I am having!

But the conventions of GPX files were a bit beyond me. You’ve shown me the way!

Yours,
Bucky

P.S. Attached please find, I hope! an example of an original download, and the FMP-created edited version that went into PE.

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[GeoMagik]

@jsgblom: re: “It would be handy if you could also export a group as CSV (pins only).”: Good point, I was thinking we already supported this :/

[jsgblom]

Another very handy GROUP related feature would be to be able to add Favorites found within a map to a group
(Selected map » View Favorites » Edit), the same way when you press the Edit button in browse » Favorites/Favorites by type. I would use this to add all favorites of a country to one group so I can easily hide them. (This could also be done by adding a Hide Favorites switch to a map!)

Also, being able to Edit a found set of browse » favorites/favorites by type would be nice. Now this is not possible because the top menu bar is hidden while entering a search string (which is currently causing the crash in Travel Guides?).

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