How To Load Maps On My Garmin GPS Unit

Last updated November 28th, 2008 at 12:09pm

These days many of Garmin’s new GPS receivers contain built in maps, from the nuvi series with road maps to the Colorado and Oregon with topos.  These receivers can still have maps loaded to them though in addition to the maps that already exist.  This how-to will detail how to load additional maps to your GPS unit.

Warning: If you bought a micro-SD card that contains maps from Garmin DO NOT overwrite this card, use another card.

Loading The Maps

1. Open Garmin MapSource (all screenshots from version 6.14.X but the process is similar for all versions)
   If you don’t have Garmin MapSource check out this tutorial on how to get it.
2. Select the map you want to load from the drop down menu in the upper left corner.
   
3. Once the map is select let it load in the main window.
4. Zoom to an appropriate level so you can see what parts you want to load (if you do not want to zoom all the way out you can select what is on screen and then easily move to another part of the map and select those areas as well).
   
5. Click the “Map Tool” button
   
6. Select the segments you want to load by dragging selection boxes on the map.
   
7. The selected areas will then turn pink:
   
   and appear in the maps tab on the left side of the screen (at the bottom of this area you can see how many segments you’ve selected and how large they are).
8. Repeat steps 2 through 7 for any other maps you want to load at the same time (such as a Topo map and City Navigator and another topo map).
9. Now plug your GPS in to the computer or put the memory card from the GPS (or the one you will use on the GPS) into your card reader.
10. Now click the “Send to Device” button
    
11. On the next screen you should see your device (make sure it’s the proper device; here I am loading to my microSD card).  Also, make sure the maps checkbox is checked.
    
12. Click “Send”
13. First it will build the mapset (could take many hours depending on the maps):
    
    then it will transfer it to the card/GPS:
    
14. You will get a success message at the end similar to: “The data has been successfully sent”

Note: Certain GPS units (60c(s)x,  Legend/Vista/Etex (H)Cx, any unit released prior to the Colorado) have map limits.  They will only read 2gb of maps on a card (even if the card is larger) and will only read 2024 segments.

Congratulations, you have now loaded the maps to your GPS unit.  If you have multiple maps loaded onto your device use the internal menus to select which map to actively view.