GPS TrackMaker: How to save GPS files and create data
tables
Products of this exercise:
1. Download waypoints into UTM format
2. Save data as a txt table
3. Use Excel to convert the text table into a .csv file, which contains UTM
waypoints along with fields for siteID and other data
Using GPS TrackMaker:
1. After opening the software, select tools, then options, then coordinates,
rectangular grids, (UTM)
2. Then select Interface from the pull down menu,
Check to make serial “Serial Port” is selected (not USB as shown in this capture), click
request from GPS, then “waypoints” then
From Pull Down menu, click on Tools, Options, then select Coordinates and click on grid
box…UTM should come up as the default “grid”..
Select waypoints by symbol….click okay then use tool to box in selected
waypoints….
After selecting waypoints and “boxing” them with tool, click on Google earth and view
Click on File, then save as and as shown below, select “waypoints text” as type of file..
and save as Map1 file to Desktop.
If you open the .txt file, it
looks just like text, but
note that the data are
comma “delimited” or
separated. We’ll use
Excel to change the
comma separation into a
table format.
Now open Excel and go to the File Pull Down option
Click “next”
At the window shown below there is an important change, “unclick” the tab box and
click the comma box as shown, this is critical…
Click “Finish” and your data table should look like….
Edit the table, help provided as needed, so that the table looks like the format below.
Go back to “Save as”, find the .csv (comma delimited) option shown below and click on
it…name the document map 2 and save it; make certain that the file name reads as
map11.csv and not map11.txt.