Etrex 30x Filename Trackname and character limits

[MartynA]

I'm new to Garmin having bought an Etrex 30x in Autumn 2016 mainly for DIYs by GPX.
GPX editor (gpxeditor.co.uk) has been my planning software.

For this month's DIY I modified a track with a snappy 15 character name and added a 2 on the end making a 16 character track name in GPX editor. I saved as a GPX file on my laptop and renamed the file as February17DIY.gpx. I connected the etrex and copied the file to the gpx folder in its internal storage. It was and still is visible there in mass storage mode under the same name as on the laptop.

Just before I set out to ride I used the track manager on the Garmin but rather than the file name all I could see was the track name that I had used on GPX editor and which is embedded in the .gpx file. I selected the name with a 2 on the end but was surprised when I got to the point that my new track diverged from the December track as the map showed the old one not the new. It looks like the name with the 2 on the end was appearing in the track selection menu but it was only using the first 15 character when it came to load the track.

Does this make sense from your knowledge of character limits and track naming and selection on Garmin?

[frankly frankie]

Googling the subject, it seems there is a historical limit of 13 chars.  By experimenting on my E30 (editing a track name on the device) it will take names 31 characters long (this is the Track name not the file name) but only the first 19 are visible in the menus, so any information placed after char 19 is useless.   Other models have other limits.

Some software (I'm tempted to say, good software) will adhere to the older 13 chars limit or some other low limit.  But possibly truncating without warning.  Then if you have put your differentiators (1, 2 etc) at the end of the name they can get lost and conflicts may arise due to duplicate Track names.  Such conflicts might get resolved by automatically renaming with 1,2 etc at the end - but not necessarily in the same way that you had numbered them originally!

When differentiating between similar track/route/waypoint names it makes sense to put the differentiator first, even though it can feel a bit ungrammatical.
So 1ROUTE 2ROUTE 3ROUTE etc, or if going over 9 it would need to be 01ROUTE, 02ROUTE, 03ROUTE - rather than
ROUTE1 ROUTE2 ROUTE3 which is just a waste of the 1st few chars really.
And Waypoint names should be kept short (I use a personal limit of 6 chars, and would certainly advise no more than 9) to avoid screen clutter in various situations.