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Gsak (geocaching Swiss Army Knife)


ClydeE

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First off I am a Mac guy, but I broke down and bought a cheap laptop because VPC just doesn't do the job for me. I have very little knowledge of some of the intricacies of Windows and I have run into a problem that seems to be Windows related.

 

I have a file in GSAK 4.1.3 and selected a number of caches. I try to export the set to Streets and Trips. I went throught the file/export/S&T link, name the file, and select an existing folder. I have tried it with a brand new folder as well as an previously existing folder. I then get an error message that I can't generate the file because the folder does not exist. I am using XP Home. What am I doing wrong here?

Without looking over your shoulder it is difficult to say exactly what you are doing wrong here.

 

However, I can offer a tip that should get this to work.

 

Firstly, create a file called test.csv using notepad (or any text editor) in the folder you want the S&T file. It doesn't matter what you put in this file (it will be overriden anyway).

 

Now when you do the S&T export, click on the little icon to the right of the export file name. This should bring up the standard windows open box. Now use this open box to navigate to the test.csv file you just created, then click on OK.

 

Now try the export. You will get a message saying "file already exists", so just take the option to override it.

 

Doing it this way will make sure that the path (folder) for the file must exist as we know it is already there on your computer.

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Right click on a waypoint name brings up a sub-menu... show online(in browser), show offline. etc.

One of the 'Custom URL' options brings up Multimap (in/out).

I have added Memory-Map as an option and it does load MM, but I don't know what paramaters to pass to MM to load the cache co-ords chosen?

Tks

Jon

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What info is protected?  I know if I archive a cache it will be unarchived with my next GPX update.  How about finds?  Are they 'unfound' when I update?

 

If it is not already in the docs, a list of items that will be overwritten by gpx update would be nice.  I have 'locked' some of my records just because I am not sure :P

If you have locked a record, then all fields are protected, otherwise only the corrected coordinates are protected.

 

Regarding the found status, this does depend upon the option you take when you load the GPX file. Please refer to the help button on the GPX load dialog or view online here.

How about the new DNF record? does it use the same setting as the Found Status?

 

Also, while I am bugging you :P would be nice if the DNFs had their own color? No need for the summary down below but would be nice if could visually spot them among the yellows & whites

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How about the new DNF record? does it use the same setting as the Found Status?

NO. Unlike the found status, there is no DNF status in the GPX file (GSAK must search your logs to get the DNF)

 

However, I will point out that if a GPX file does contain a find, then any DNF for the same cache will be cleared.

 

Also, while I am bugging you  would be nice if the DNFs had their own color? No need for the summary down below but would be nice if could visually spot them among the yellows & whites

Added to "the list"

Edited by ClydeE
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Right click on a waypoint name brings up a sub-menu... show online(in browser), show offline. etc.

One of the 'Custom URL' options brings up Multimap (in/out).

I have added Memory-Map as an option and it does load MM, but I don't know what paramaters to pass to MM to load the cache co-ords chosen?

Tks

Jon

Memory map is a program not a URL. That section is only for URL links.

 

Being able to run a program in a similar way will be introduced in version 4.2

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Thanks for that Clyde.  I did that and it worked until I tried to open the file in S&T where I got an error message that the file had  bad format.  It also did not show the file in the list of files in the folder, I had to add it in at the bottom of the dialog box.

This would imply that the file you opened up in S&T is the one you created using notepad rather than GSAK.

 

There is obviously someting you are doing wrong here, It is just not obvious to me at the moment.

 

As I don't use S&T or that export, perhaps some other S&T user might like to jump in here and try to give you a hand.

Edited by ClydeE
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So to make this work on the loc file you just tried

 

1. Do a global replace of "Found Geocache" to "Geocache Found"

2. Do a global replace of "type>" to "sym>" 

 

Let us all know how you get on  :P

Great suggestions! I've learned a couple of things also, but my mental clarity is fading fast, so I want to review things further before I post them. I'm off for an all-day adventure tomorrow, but hope to follow up with another post either tomo night or Sat. morning.

Ok, here are some things I noticed:

  • When I convert the .loc file to .gpx (I tried both GSAK and ExpertGPS), the resulting .gpx contains both the <type> and <sym> fields, so all I need to do is replace the content of the <sym> tag itself, not replace the <type> tags. Doing that results in two <sym> line entries.
     
  • Because the file containing my 'found' marks originated from a .loc file, when it's merged (using any of the available 'Database Update' options), it strips all the info for those marks from the database. For Benchmarking purposes, I might suggest an option to never update the database, and only update the found status. That would leave all of the information intact

PQs for BMs would eliminate this second problem, but I'm very happy working with the files by county, especially since GSAK is so flexible and Clyde is so responsive!

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Thanks for that Clyde.  I did that and it worked until I tried to open the file in S&T where I got an error message that the file had  bad format.  It also did not show the file in the list of files in the folder, I had to add it in at the bottom of the dialog box.

Are you "opening" the file or using the "data import wizard"? If you try to "open" a csv file it will give you a bad format message. If you go to [DATA] and use the data import wizard it should open a csv file.Then save it as an est file.

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Thanks for that Clyde.  I did that and it worked until I tried to open the file in S&T where I got an error message that the file had  bad format.  It also did not show the file in the list of files in the folder, I had to add it in at the bottom of the dialog box.

Are you "opening" the file or using the "data import wizard"? If you try to "open" a csv file it will give you a bad format message. If you go to [DATA] and use the data import wizard it should open a csv file.Then save it as an est file.

That did it. Thanks for the help.

 

I was using open. Now I know.

 

I will get this all working soon.

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Clyde, I'd like to put in another request... I'd like to see some sort of a "perm. lock." Right now when I filter my caches for notfound so I can delete all the not founds, a few caches that have special requirements and require me to correct the coords are listed in the notfounds and of course the little puzzles I had to solve to get the proper coords took alot of time and I'd rather not delete those. I thought that if I were to lock those special caches that I've solved puzzles for (but have yet to find) they wouldn't be deleted when I do a "delete all caches in this filter," but atlast.. they do get deleted. Is there anyway you can possibly change the behavior of lock to actually LOCK and save things from being deleted in a "delete all in this filter." Appreciate it!

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Bleh, disregard Clyde. You've thought of everything with this these filters. I just realized I could just add "is locked" to my filter criteria so that those wouldn't even be in the notfound filter. Once again, another dumb request w/o thinking and reading.. oh well. Thanks for the great software! :P

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Another feature request, but maybe a simple one????

 

Would it be possible to have a column in the display that shows the smart name if the user has assigned one? I was busy overriding a dozen or so smart names (for a series of roman-numeraled caches) and realized that I had missed some when I exported the caches. If I had a column showing the smart name or even just a check box indicating that smart name generation had been overridden, it would have been easy to see which ones I had gotten and which ones I had missed.

 

I imagine the "list" is getting pretty long, so maybe this isn't too important, but it would be nice for the times you're forcing names on a group of caches.

 

Jon

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Another feature request, but maybe a simple one????

 

Would it be possible to have a column in the display that shows the smart name if the user has assigned one? I was busy overriding a dozen or so smart names (for a series of roman-numeraled caches) and realized that I had missed some when I exported the caches. If I had a column showing the smart name or even just a check box indicating that smart name generation had been overridden, it would have been easy to see which ones I had gotten and which ones I had missed.

 

I imagine the "list" is getting pretty long, so maybe this isn't too important, but it would be nice for the times you're forcing names on a group of caches.

 

Jon

You are in luck on this one.

 

The GSAK thread is not the only place that I get requests from. Although I prefer people to post on the boards (others get to see the comments and answers) there are way more users than email me directly.

 

To be able to add a column for the "smart name" was one that came up a lot. Though not an easy change, it had to happen.

 

Version 4.2 allows you to add the "smart name" column. This column now shows ALL smart names, but the ones you have overriden are in bold. You can also sort on this column.

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When I convert the .loc file to .gpx (I tried both GSAK and ExpertGPS), the resulting .gpx contains both the <type> and <sym> fields, so all I need to do is replace the content of the <sym> tag itself, not replace the <type> tags.  Doing that results in two <sym> line entries.

My suggestion was for the orignal file, not a loc converted to a GPX file.

 

Because the file containing my 'found' marks originated from a .loc file, when it's merged (using any of the available 'Database Update' options), it strips all the info for those marks from the database.  For Benchmarking purposes, I might suggest an option to never update the database, and only update the found status.  That would leave all of the information intact

Yes, this will happen if you use the GPX format. However, If you use the original LOC file (doing the search and replace as per my original post) then the only data that gets updated in your database are the elements in that loc file.

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When I convert the .loc file to .gpx (I tried both GSAK and ExpertGPS), the resulting .gpx contains both the <type> and <sym> fields, so all I need to do is replace the content of the <sym> tag itself, not replace the <type> tags.  Doing that results in two <sym> line entries.

My suggestion was for the orignal file, not a loc converted to a GPX file.

 

Because the file containing my 'found' marks originated from a .loc file, when it's merged (using any of the available 'Database Update' options), it strips all the info for those marks from the database.  For Benchmarking purposes, I might suggest an option to never update the database, and only update the found status.  That would leave all of the information intact

Yes, this will happen if you use the GPX format. However, If you use the original LOC file (doing the search and replace as per my original post) then the only data that gets updated in your database are the elements in that loc file.

Thanks for the clarification. I'll give that a try.

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Version 4.2 allows you to add the "smart name" column. This column now shows ALL smart names, but the ones you have overriden are in bold. You can also sort on this column.

Even better than I hoped for! My finger is poised on the download button (or will be the moment GSAK 4.2 goes up anyway).

 

Thanks,

Jon

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Clyde,

 

I think you've got a fabtabulous program and I use it quite a bit. you work is much appreciated.

 

While I was trying to figure out how to automate importing my weekly PQs an idea struck me. Right now, I manually download my PQs via my mail client, save them, open GSAK and import. I was planning on automating part of this, but it involves something similar I do to update our association's last caches module. I have that PQ go to a special mailbox and a BAT file check that mailbox, download anything that is there, GPXspinner does it's magic and the results are FTPed to the site.

 

I was going to do something similar with GSAK, but then I had an idea which may or may not be workable. What if GSAK had the ability to download mail and import it directly? All it would really need to do is is get the headers, make a decision based on those headers of which messages to get, download, convert, import, and optionally delete the message from the server.

 

Thanks for listening.

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Another idea I had and I mentioned it in another tread a while back.

 

I have a problem with GSAK's and GPXspinner's single digit Diff and Terr abbreviation. For me, it's just not intuitive enough to simply convert 6 to 3.5 at a glance. As result, I don't use it.

 

I had thought that maybe a slightly different scheme would be easier for some folks like myself. This would be an optional way to renumber so those who like the present scheme can keep it.

 

What I propose is each of the whole numbers would stay the same and each half star would be a letter.

Full score  : 1 - 1½ - 2 - 2½ - 3 - 3½ - 4 - 4½ - 5
Single digit: 1 - 2  - 3 - 4  - 5 - 6  - 7 - 8  - 9
Modified SD : 1 - A  - 2 - B  - 3 - C  - 4 - D  - 5

 

As you see in the Modifies SD scheme the whole numbers need no translation at all versus each digit after 1 in the standard scheme. The letters are very easily converted, just count the position in the alphabet and add ½.

 

I understand the conversion isn't as simple as the standard single digit scheme, but I might just use it if the characters were easier to convert at a glance.

 

Thanks for listening.

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Another idea I had and I mentioned it in another tread a while back.

 

I have a problem with GSAK's and GPXspinner's single digit Diff and Terr abbreviation.  For me, it's just not intuitive enough to simply convert 6 to 3.5 at a glance.  As result, I don't use it.

 

I had thought that maybe a slightly different scheme would be easier for some folks like myself.  This would be an optional way to renumber so those who like the present scheme can keep it.

 

What I propose is each of the whole numbers would stay the same and each half star would be a letter.

Full score  : 1 - 1½ - 2 - 2½ - 3 - 3½ - 4 - 4½ - 5
Single digit: 1 - 2  - 3 - 4  - 5 - 6  - 7 - 8  - 9
Modified SD : 1 - A  - 2 - B  - 3 - C  - 4 - D  - 5

 

As you see in the Modifies SD scheme the whole numbers need no translation at all versus each digit after 1 in the standard scheme.  The letters are very easily converted, just count the position in the alphabet and add ½.

 

I understand the conversion isn't as simple as the standard single digit scheme, but I might just use it if the characters were easier to convert at a glance.

 

Thanks for listening.

I must confess, the single digit abbreviations confuse the hell out of me too B)

 

I originally did it this way because that was the suggestion, and also to be compatible with GPX spinner.

 

I do quite like your suggestion.

 

I understand the conversion isn't as simple as the standard single digit scheme, but I might just use it if the characters were easier to convert at a glance.

Programming is a funny thing. Some features look easy, but are very difficult to implement. The opposite is also true. Fortunately, this one does come under the "easy to do" category. As I have not signed off on 4.2 yet I will try to squeeze this feature in before I do.

Edited by ClydeE
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Clyde,

 

I think you've got a fabtabulous program and I use it quite a bit. you work is much appreciated.

 

While I was trying to figure out how to automate importing my weekly PQs an idea struck me. Right now, I manually download my PQs via my mail client, save them, open GSAK and import. I was planning on automating part of this, but it involves something similar I do to update our association's last caches module. I have that PQ go to a special mailbox and a BAT file check that mailbox, download anything that is there, GPXspinner does it's magic and the results are FTPed to the site.

 

I was going to do something similar with GSAK, but then I had an idea which may or may not be workable. What if GSAK had the ability to download mail and import it directly? All it would really need to do is is get the headers, make a decision based on those headers of which messages to get, download, convert, import, and optionally delete the message from the server.

 

Thanks for listening.

A very intersting concept.

 

This is certainly not out of the ball park, as I have all the tools required to interrogate and download messages from a pop3 server.

 

A reasonalble amount of work involved to implement this, but nothing that I would say is difficult.

 

Unfortunately, this is one feature that won't squeeze into 4.2 but is surely worth a look in 4.3

 

I would be interested to get more feedback on how/if others would find this feature useful.

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Regarding the email, that would be great if that was the only email you were to ever get. But how would it decipher between regular email and emails with PQ's and grab them over standard email. Not worth the hassle to me. I mean does it's really take you that long to click open an attachment, open winzip, extract the file/files, then import it into GSAK. It takes me less than a minute to do 5 a day.

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Regarding the email, that would be great if that was the only email you were to ever get. But how would it decipher between regular email and emails with PQ's and grab them over standard email. Not worth the hassle to me. I mean does it's really take you that long to click open an attachment, open winzip, extract the file/files, then import it into GSAK. It takes me less than a minute to do 5 a day.

Why bother opening WinZip, Just Drag the attachment into an open folder, then drag the Zip File from that folder into GSAK. No need to extract the file, GSAK does it for you. I keep a shortcut to a folder on my desktop just for this.

 

Cache Well

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the only problem with getting the pq's as a zip file is that you need to extract them so that gpxsonar can work with them on the pocketpc. Thats why i download as zip and then my batch file extracts, imports into gsak and saves ready for a synch.

As for the "other emails" - what other emails? PQ's can be sent to a different address so you could send it to an account that receives ONLY pq's. I know some isps dont allow multiple mailboxes, but getting a domain that does is not expensive and makes life a lot easier when you come to switch your main isp.

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Regarding the email, that would be great if that was the only email you were to ever get. But how would it decipher between regular email and emails with PQ's and grab them over standard email. Not worth the hassle to me. I mean does it's really take you that long to click open an attachment, open winzip, extract the file/files, then import it into GSAK. It takes me less than a minute to do 5 a day.

This is what CoyoteRed meant by interrogating the headers.

 

I think you would find that PQ(s) sent to you from geocaching.com have something unique about them that would enable GSAK to identify them as opposed to other mail (even just the name of the attached zip file would be enough)

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Regarding the email, that would be great if that was the only email you were to ever get. But how would it decipher between regular email and emails with PQ's and grab them over standard email. Not worth the hassle to me. I mean does it's really take you that long to click open an attachment, open winzip, extract the file/files, then import it into GSAK. It takes me less than a minute to do 5 a day.

Why bother opening WinZip, Just Drag the attachment into an open folder, then drag the Zip File from that folder into GSAK. No need to extract the file, GSAK does it for you. I keep a shortcut to a folder on my desktop just for this.

 

Cache Well

Or better still, if your email client supports this, just drag your zip file attachment to GSAK.

 

Note: This method works for most email clients but not all. For example, it works for Outlook express but not Outlook (both by Microsoft, so go figure)

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Very interesting, thanks for the tip. I was always opening the email, saving the attachment to a folder, opening the zip, extracting the zip, then opening GSAK, importing, etc... now all I have to do is drag the zip straight onto a shortcut. Very simple, not that it wasn't simple before. Thanks guys.

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I have 451 records I'd like to set the LOCK flag on. Please tell me I'm not doomed to click 451 times, once for each record. I don't see any way to select multiple records (shift-select isn't doing what I'd expect it to do), and the help facility doesn't tell me much about the lock feature except that it will do what I want, not how to set it for multiple records. Help.

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I have 451 records I'd like to set the LOCK flag on. Please tell me I'm not doomed to click 451 times, once for each record. I don't see any way to select multiple records (shift-select isn't doing what I'd expect it to do), and the help facility doesn't tell me much about the lock feature except that it will do what I want, not how to set it for multiple records. Help.

As I mentioned just recently in a previous post, a global replace feature is coming in version 4.2

 

However, if you need a work around now please see item 11 of the GSAK FAQ here http://www.gsak.net/help410/hs1070.htm

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For me, it's just not intuitive enough to simply convert 6 to 3.5 at a glance.  As result, I don't use it.

 

Not hard, just add 1 divide by 2.

Yeah, I know it's not hard and I can do it in my head.

 

It's just not intuitive enough. I found that it took me much longer than I wanted to do the conversion. I ended up not bothering with it.

 

I figured, if I had problems, then maybe others did as well. I figured this might be a lot easier for some folks, thus the suggestion.

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ClydeE if you are going to make a change to the way GSAK converts "stars" to single characters. I suggest you set up a translation table like you did for converting caches types to symbols.

 

Maybe default it to the the Spinner method

 

That way CoyoteRed could set it with his method, someone else could use the first 9 letters. In fact if you didn't limit it to one character, you could have something like 1=1 1.5=1+, 2=2, 2.5=2+, etc.

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However, if you need a work around now please see item 11 of the GSAK FAQ here http://www.gsak.net/help410/hs1070.htm

I don't see any LOCK field in the GPX file. I did the export as indicated in the FAQ workaround, then in a text editor I did a search on the exported GPX file for "lock" and it came up with nothing that I could identify as a lock flag, only the word "flock," "lock" etc., that were in the descriptions for the caches. There seem to be no GSAK-specific database fields in the GPX file. So how exactly do I set the LOCK flag for these 451 records using this GPX file I exported?

 

Thanks,

-mark.

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However, if you need a work around now please see item 11 of the GSAK FAQ here http://www.gsak.net/help410/hs1070.htm

I don't see any LOCK field in the GPX file. I did the export as indicated in the FAQ workaround, then in a text editor I did a search on the exported GPX file for "lock" and it came up with nothing that I could identify as a lock flag, only the word "flock," "lock" etc., that were in the descriptions for the caches. There seem to be no GSAK-specific database fields in the GPX file. So how exactly do I set the LOCK flag for these 451 records using this GPX file I exported?

 

Thanks,

-mark.

Make sure you have selected "include GSAK extra fields in export" when saving the .gpx file. Then when you do a search in your text editor search on "<gsakLock>False</gsakLock>" and change False to True.

 

Luck, Olar

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When I convert the .loc file to .gpx (I tried both GSAK and ExpertGPS), the resulting .gpx contains both the <type> and <sym> fields, so all I need to do is replace the content of the <sym> tag itself, not replace the <type> tags.  Doing that results in two <sym> line entries.

My suggestion was for the orignal file, not a loc converted to a GPX file.

 

Because the file containing my 'found' marks originated from a .loc file, when it's merged (using any of the available 'Database Update' options), it strips all the info for those marks from the database.  For Benchmarking purposes, I might suggest an option to never update the database, and only update the found status.  That would leave all of the information intact

Yes, this will happen if you use the GPX format. However, If you use the original LOC file (doing the search and replace as per my original post) then the only data that gets updated in your database are the elements in that loc file.

That does seem to be an improvement over what I was doing, however, the date placed and state still get destroyed. Since I am merging BM finds from multiple states, the option to enter the state manually doesn't completely solve this.

 

At any rate, it's faster than pecking off one at a time! Any estimate on when 4.2 may be arriving? I promise I won't hold you to it. :unsure:

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However, if you need a work around now please see item 11 of the GSAK FAQ here http://www.gsak.net/help410/hs1070.htm

I don't see any LOCK field in the GPX file. I did the export as indicated in the FAQ workaround, then in a text editor I did a search on the exported GPX file for "lock" and it came up with nothing that I could identify as a lock flag, only the word "flock," "lock" etc., that were in the descriptions for the caches. There seem to be no GSAK-specific database fields in the GPX file. So how exactly do I set the LOCK flag for these 451 records using this GPX file I exported?

 

Thanks,

-mark.

Make sure you have selected "include GSAK extra fields in export" when saving the .gpx file. Then when you do a search in your text editor search on "<gsakLock>False</gsakLock>" and change False to True.

 

Luck, Olar

Thanks Olar, but ....

 

Just to clarify - do a search and replace on something like "<gsakLock>False" to "<gsakLock>True"

 

Because if you just do a search and replace on "False" to "True" you will change every other occurrence of "False" in you GPX file - and this is surely not want you want to do.

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At any rate, it's faster than pecking off one at a time! Any estimate on when 4.2 may be arriving? I promise I won't hold you to it.

I must confess, I don't like quoting the ETA as people often get disappointed/angry if it doesn't happen.

 

However, I will give some indication by saying that if all goes well it should be out in the next couple of weeks.

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Make sure you have selected "include GSAK extra fields in export" when saving the .gpx file. Then when you do a search in your text editor search on "<gsakLock>False</gsakLock>" and change False to True.

 

Just to clarify - do a search and replace on something like "<gsakLock>False" to "<gsakLock>True"

Thanks guys, that did the trick. Saved me 902 very boring and tedious mouse-clicks. My carpal tunnels thank you too... :unsure:

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I noticed the last time exported to cachemate from GSAK that when I go to look up the waypoint it is the same as name. What did I do wrong? When I go to sort by name or waypoint they are the same. How can I fix this??

You're seeing the waypoint as the name in CacheMate, you mean? Go to the List Options popup in that program (accessible from the CM list view) and make sure you don't have the options checked to show the waypoint as the name.

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You're seeing the waypoint as the name in CacheMate, you mean?  Go to the List Options popup in that program (accessible from the CM list view) and make sure you don't have the options checked to show the waypoint as the name.

That option is not choosen or checked. I think I saved something some where wrong in GSAK. not sure where yet. :lol:

Edited by Panda Fan
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You're seeing the waypoint as the name in CacheMate, you mean?  Go to the List Options popup in that program (accessible from the CM list view) and make sure you don't have the options checked to show the waypoint as the name.

That option is not choosen or checked. I think I saved something some where wrong in GSAK. not sure where yet. :lol:

See the image below. I suspect you have something like %name or %smart here. Just change it back to %code and you will get the GCXXXX code for the waypoint name. For more information of "using special tags" please see the help file or view online here

 

cmate.png

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