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Postcodes Not Recognised On Sat Nav

17K views 21 replies 9 participants last post by  davew 
#1 ·
Hi, i'm off on a French road trip next week and thought i'd program my Sat Nav with all the important destinations i'm driving to and I've hit a brick wall straight away. I'm trying to program Plymouth Docks into it with the postcode PL1 3EW but the sat nav won't accept this. I've got a TOM TOM VIA 135 sat nav and the postcode was recognised straight away. Seems a shame i might have to attach this to my windscreen when i have a perfectly good sat nav built in. What am i missing here? Why won't postcode PL1 3EW enter on my Cactus sat nav?

Your help is much appreciated.
 
#3 ·
Space or no space it should accept the postcode. Yes I've tried it. I think i'm going to rely on my TOM TOM sat nav for my road trip as i'm not confident at all with my Cactus sat nav. The interface is very clunky and so slow. TOM TOM you just enter the postcode and your away. Shame really, but I think i'll leave the LCD screen with either the radio or heater settings on so it looks like the built in unit has got some use...
 
#7 ·
Thats very strange. Wonder why that postcode won't work on mine with or without a space. As a note, i've just updated my UK and French maps to the latest version (111 i think) using MapCare through my Citreon account. It updated successfuly but i i wonder if that may have something to do with it...
 
#11 ·
According to a Brit who resides in France - writing in 2016 -

"Tthere's a famous trick with UK postcodes: you can send a letter to someone with just the postcode and the house number written on the envelope and it'll get delivered... UK postcodes are accurate to within about 20-30 houses...

This doesn't work in France - my particular French postcode covers a population of about 150,000 people."

I think your "brickwall"you've encountered in entering destinations into the satnav is actually more of a minor chicane on the route -
If you don't have a post code or are not happy with the way the satnav is dealing with it - you can get the lat / long during your route planning activity from various web sites such as here http://www.get-direction.com/address-to-lat-long.html and enter these into the Cactus satnav on-screen lat/ long box.

Using this web site your Plymouth Post code PL1 3EW comes up (in Degrees-minutes-seconds format) as lat = 50-21-53 N , long= 4-9-32W.
 
#12 ·
Just tried it on my Cactus satnav and it went straight in with no issues. The only time I've ever had an issue with entering postcodes is when they've recently been changed or they're in new developments that the maps haven't yet been taught about.
 
#19 ·
Peopleselbowpad said:
Thanks. What about the house number?
The logic adopted by the satnav software designer seems to be:

If a post code is entered, no other information is necessary (ie street name & house number) and these details cannot be entered.

However, if a city name is entered, a road name can then be entered and then a house number.

Sort of makes sense...

If you only have a vague information of the destination (eg name of an airport) it is possible to get the latitude and longitude for direct entry into the satnav, from various web sites before you set off.

For example this site http://www.get-direction.com/address-to-lat-long.html allows you to view a map of a city / region and click the mouse to mark a location and then can immediately see its position coordinates.
The satnav menu allows these coordinates to be entered as the destination location by choosing the satnav secondary level menu. Might seem a bit fiddly but it does work.
 
#22 ·
geoff said:
My sat nav will not recognise any postcode that only has two numbers. Any ideas please.
Does your satnav not find these locations or does the satnav not accept as a valid post code entry?

If the latter case, my understanding is that the satnav software is expecting seven characters to be entered on the screen, so for a UK post code made up of two letters followed by two numbers and then two more letters, it is necessary to insert a space between the two numbers to give the total of seven characters.
 
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