hi, i've using map point for a while for my delivery business. i like how it calculates my rate with distances and so on. theres some things that ive been wanting to do on it but i cant find any information on it. i went to best buy and frys to ask questions but the people who were in charge of the gps area didnt know what map point was so i thought i try here. what i want to know is

• which gps's are compatible with mappoint
• how can i use excel and mappoint together
• my map to show all my customers and where all my business is coming from
• mile charter & map point
• how can i enter routes into my gps

can someone link me to some tutorials that are related to these... would appreciate it very much! THANKS!!!

MapPoint should work with any NMEA-0183 GPS receiver, but it sounds like you are referring to a "Personal Navigation Device" (PND) as Microsoft used to call them, or a "satnav" as they call them in the UK. You should be able to use the GPX export option in MapPoint 2010, although I have not tried using it myself.

For Excel, MapPoint as an "Export to Excel" option. Try selecting a shape or pushpin set, right clicking should give you "Export to Excel" in the menu that appears. (if you want to export a route's waypoints to Excel, then our RouteWriter product will do this - see RouteWriter: Export Routes from Microsoft MapPoint ).

For importing from Excel, then try the Data Import Wizard on the "Data" menu. This takes you through the required steps. Your Excel worksheet will need column(s) to represent the locations - eg. coordinates, street addresses, and a column for the data vallue. You can import pushpins, shaded areas, pie charts, etc. At the moment, the best descriptions can be found in th eHelp documentation, and in the (rather dated and visually out of date but very cheap secondhand) MapPoint for Dummies Book.

I shall be writing a lot of this stuff up for my new 'howto' section at mapping-tools.com : How to use Microsoft MapPoint This is a work in progress, so the current set of articles cover basics like zooming & panning, and some existing articles I already had - these listed pushpins, colors, and gave various programming tips. Anyway bookmark it, and over the coming months you'll find it useful.

As for MileCharter, the MileCharter: Home Page website has some demos and walkthroughs. There's a free trial, and the help file includes a couple of walk-through tutorials. Output is to Excel. Our MPMileage product can also automate mileage computation but for point-to-point routes rather group-to-group.


Richard

thank you!

Just a quick note that the GPX file export functionality Richard mentioned above, is only in the new MapPoint 2010. The feature is not present in your MapPoint 2009.