Geocaching Symbols on your Garmin--Revisited

Well, this tutorial has turned out to be quite the learning experience for me! I now realize how hard it is to make a tutorial "from scratch" when it has already been done on your computer. So if my screens don't look quite like yours, don't worry. My icons may look a little different and my directories may be a little different. But the general steps are the same, so if you can unzip the file and find your GSAK directory, you should be good to go.

But I did have to make a couple of "tweaks" to the macro that might have caused you some grief. So if you have tried to get this macro to work, and it didn't, I might have the fix you need.

After a couple of people tried this tutorial, it was clear that my original macro had become corrupted somehow. I downloaded the files from the web site, and I couldn't even get it to work. After uploading a new file, I have tested it a few times on my machine and on another person's computer and GPS, and it now seems to be working.

Caches That I Own Problem

And as common with me and computers, it revealed another oversight--Caches that I Own.

You will recall that there was a symbol that I had chosen for caches that I placed.  This meant that any of my owned caches would be shown using this symbol, instead of the container symbol.  After all, since I placed them I should know the cache type and container size.   However, I failed to factor how this was determined and its impact when others used the same macro. I had set the macro up to use my GC.com UserID to identify my own caches.  The result:  if anyone else sent one of my (meaning swimmrguy's) caches to the GPS, it would get assigned the star symbol instead of the cache type symbol. I have fixed this by setting the UserID in the macro to "000000"  This will avoid any caches from being assigned the "owned" symbol.  It will, however, not mark the caches that you haved placed with this symbol. If you don't intend to send your own caches to your GPS (or you haven't placed any caches), then you don't need to go any further. The macro should work fine for you 'as is.'  If you do, however, want to have your own caches marked with this symbol, the instructions below will step you through how to do this.

Identifying Your Own Caches

There are two steps in identifying your own caches:

1. You need to find your GC.com UserID number
2. You need to edit the macro to change the UserID number to your own number

Finding your GC.com UserID number:

The easiest way to find your GC.com UserID is from one of your posts in the GC.com forum.  If you have never posted in the GC.com geocaching forums, then here is a perfect thread for you to post a message .  Just a quick note is all you need to post.  If you are asked to log in, use your GC.com username and password. 

Once you have posted a message, find your message and hover your mouse over your username to the left of your forum post.  With your mouse in that position, you should be able to see your userID at the bottom of the browser window.

In this example, you can see that my UserID is 778219

Editing the Macro

Don't worry...this is easy!

1. In GSAK, click on Macro...Run/Manage
2. Click on the GCSE_SG.gsk macro to select it.  Then click the right mouse and select "Edit - New window" The GSAK Macro Editor will open.
3. Look for these 4 lines towards the end of the macro
4. Change the UserID from "000000" to your UserID that you found as described above. Close the macro editor, making sure to save your changes.

You should be all set. When you send geocaches to your GPSr, your own caches should now be marked with the star. However, I might have forgotten something yet again. Please don't hesitate to let me know! And write your UserID down--it can be useful in other places too.