Bad Garmin data file

We would like to introduce this is a great website to all road.cc members who use Garmin GPS units for tracking their rides. It allows you to join,splice,strip and edit just about everything you might ever need to do with your Garmin FIT activity files, it also now allows direct fit file upload to your beloved Strava account account Strava authorization is required.

Fit File Tools @ http://www.fitfiletools.com/ is simply labelled as a collection of useful tools for manipulating FIT files however we reckon that it offers a whole lot more for the user, totally for FREE, is has been coded and is constantly being improved by a fellow a Strava user and software developer from the States called Kevin Flanagan,Team Cycleton . You can follow him @ http://www.strava.com/athletes/66666

SpideRaY
http://rideontheedge.blogspot.co.uk/

I've used this one a few times and it works quite well:

http://www.fitfilerepairtool.info/

There's a trial version and a paid version. It also requires the MS Access runtime.

If you're running Windows and don't mind getting your "hands dirty", technically speaking, you can try converting the .fit file to CSV format and open it in a spreadsheet app such as Excel, Open Office, etc, or just a text editor:

Download the FIT SDK from here:

http://www.thisisant.com/resources/fit/

You'll find loads of useful stuff on this page too:

http://www.thisisant.com/developer/resources/downloads/

It allows you to convert a .FIT file to .CSV and vice-versa. So you can take any FIT file eg. totals, settings, locations, weight, etc and convert it to CSV which you can load into MS Excel or any text editor. Then you can make your changes, convert it back to FIT format, and copy it back to the GPS.

Just download and extract the zip file to any directory, open a command (DOS) prompt, navigate to the directory where you extracted the zip file and then to the java sub-directory. Then:

To convert a FIT file to CSV (substitute your file name):
• java -jar FitCSVTool.jar -b file.fit file.csv -d

To convert a CSV file to FIT:

• java -jar FitCSVTool.jar -c file.csv file.fit -d

If you want you can copy the modified FIT file back to the NewFiles folder on the GPS.

The -d option on the end of the command is optional and just outputs extra debugging info.

You need the Java runtime installed on your PC of course - I don't know what version but 1.5 or later should work OK.

Hope that helps.

Not Garmin support - they're useless. The user forum - the users are helpful.

Garmin support were no help! They couldn't fix the file, that's when I resorted to the www.

Badness from Garmin - it's to be expected? Rejoice!

Try asking the question in the Garmin support forums at https://forums.garmin.com/forum.php - attach your broken FIT file and one of the ever helpful chaps over there will recover whatever is possible.

Or... buy yourself a copy of the FITFileRepairTool - although for one ride, it seems overkill to me (especially when help is otherwise available)

I've had that problem, Gramin Tourer, I found some auto fix routines on the web but they didn't fix it enough to get the file into Strava. In the end I plumped for the tried and tested, export the file as xml, then manually correct it! That was realtively easy as it was the date-time stamps and search/replace worked a treat!