Adding custom destinations (vCards) to Nav

ChrisG

Full Member
Apr 22, 2002
426
1
Hants
I couldn't find any mention of it here and the Nav user manual is lacking any meaningful instructions so I just thought I'd document how I added a set of custom destinations to the Nav for an upcoming holiday.

To do this you'll need either an SD card or USB stick to get the data into the car (DONT use the Nav's own SD Card supplied with the car!)

Edit 15/05/16 - Just setting up this year's holiday stops and the VW URL no longer seems to work sadly. I've just edited the vcf's I had but I did find these links though which might work. Also at the bottom an example vcf file of a French hotel we stayed at last year.
http://www.iit.comillas.edu/palacios/rns510.html
http://rns315.blogspot.co.uk/
  1. First go to The VW Nav Companion website. It's in German but don't use Google Translate as it doesnt work.
  2. Type in the address or postcode in either "Interesse" (Interest) or "Ort" (Place) then click "Suche Starten"
  3. Depending on what the map finds it will give you one or more options for the destination, chose the correct one then click "Speichern" to download the vCard vcf file
  4. If necessary now open up the vcf file in a text editor and edit the name, address or Long/Lat coordinates to make it as accurate as possible
  5. Now copy the vcf file to SD Card/USB. You can create a subfolder if you want, it doesn't have to be in the root directory.
  6. Now plug the device into the car in the glovebox and start Navigation
  7. Select Setup from the bottom of the screen then select "Import Destinations"
  8. Select the media you've plugged in then the folder where the vCard is stored, then select "Import all vCards from this destination"
  9. You should get a confirmation that the import was successful
  10. Now go back to the main Nav screen and select "My Dest" in the top left corner then select "Destination Memory", you should see the imported destination which you can select and route to.

Once you have one vCard generated you could potentially use that as a template and edit it manually in Notepad etc without needing to go back to the VW Nav Companion website. It's not quite full itinerary planning like you'd get on TomTom but its still very useful for putting in multiple destinations that you use a lot, or destinations in foreign countries that are tricky to type in reliably on the touch screen.

Edit - vCard example of a hotel we stayed last year
Code:
BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
N;CHARSET=UTF-8:2, B&B Hotel Evreux;;;;;
FN;CHARSET=UTF-8:2, B&B Hotel Evreux
ADR;CHARSET=UTF-8:;;Rue Clément Ader 131;Évreux;;27000;FR
GEO:49.014884;1.1809069999999338
END:VCARD
 
Last edited:

dephead2004

Active Member
Aug 3, 2013
918
12
Chris G, this is excellent research and similar to the bmw connected drive remote route planning which is so useful. Plan a route from your desktop big screen in the warm.

I'm going try it.

Great research. Thanks
 

Deleted member 98136

Guest
Well done Chris

A very useful piece of detective work and the resultant clear instructions.

Thanks
 

ChrisG

Full Member
Apr 22, 2002
426
1
Hants
No problem, I found some of the info I needed on a Tuigan forum of all places, surprised its not better documented by SEAT!

I started looking into it as we're driving down to the Dordogne in May with overnight stopovers and I didn't want to be manually typing in French hotel addresses etc whilst on the move and worrying about them being correctly found by the Nav.
 

Tell

Full Member
Staff member
Moderator
I'm limbering up to ordering an Ateca when you can and reviewing map imports (as well as investigating whether it plays FLAC).

I see there is the Skoda MyDestinations website in English which allows creation of destinations

http://mydestination.skoda-auto.com/?appVIN=&appLanguage=en-GB

For Chris' destination above I get

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
CATEGORIES:VIP
X-VIPCategory:private
ADR;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:;;Rue Clément Ader ;Le Vieil-Évreux;;27930;France
X-NAVADDR:;;;;;;;;;
GEO:49.0139;1.18451
X-FLAG:
REV:20160520T123312z
FN;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:B&B Hotel Evreux
UID:AddresBookPersistentProvider3
END:VCARD

There is a POI collection import at the bottom of the import screen. Advantage, the website is in English. I recall on POIs it had a problem with extended character set whilst the German one didn't (I reckon). It stumbled on Lidl European POIs which have extended character sets, the German one was more embracing.

Has anybody tried the Skoda site with Seat navigation, similar output to the VW one. I can't since I haven't got the car yet - suspect it works fine. Cogitating on importing my Co-pilot favourites. Drawn a blank on that since they seem to be in a non standard format, think I will have to type them all in again by hand using something like the Skoda or VW sites. Google didn't reveal anything for me on the import / readability of Co-Pilot favourites.
 
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