The_Judge

Loum67

There are some issues with the navi and software on the E400. Check the "I love it " thread. I posted some and there are links to the E300 forums that also point some out.

Mr. Toad

I have this same problem with my 2016 model. There is no 100% effective remedy (to my knowledge), but about 95-98% of the problem can usually be eliminated by editing the addresses on your phone to use abbreviated road types without any punctuation. For example, if the contact in your phone currently indicates "1234 Main Street", change it to "1234 Main St". Similarly, change "Road" to "Rd", "Lane" to "Ln", etc. The next time your car syncs with your phone, you should find that most of the addresses will be accepted by COMAND as navigation destinations.

The_Judge

Thanks for the suggestion. However, I have 1804 addresses on my phone and in Outlook.

Mr. Toad

I get it, but what I described is the only available (semi) solution at this time. Maybe you could export your contacts in CSV format and then perform a find/replace on the terms.

My service advisor offered to update my existing COMAND software to the "current" version (which would be the one you have), but I told him I'd rather wait for a newer version with fewer bugs than what's out there right now. Based on your experience, I'm glad I didn't go through with that, as it obviously would not have addressed the problem. Aside from this issue, my COMAND software is relatively stable.

The_Judge

I thought about the mass edit but haven't yet done it. Worth a shot.

Any suggestions? Should "Avenue" be "Ave" or "Ave." (i.e., with or without a period)?

What about North, South, etc. — Just N, or N.? Suite — Ste or Ste.? Etc. etc. etc.

Mr. Toad

Yes, "Avenue" should be changed to "Ave", and do not include a period after any of the abbreviations.

Directions should be entered as single letters, e.g., "North" as "N", "East" as "E", etc.

I believe "Suite" should also be abbreviated (and without a period), but not sure it matters because information like apartment numbers isn't usually utilized by navigation software; it only navigates to the house/building number and street name.

The_Judge

Didn't work. I exported my Outlook addresses to a CSV file, edited that in Excel 2016 replacing "Street'' with "St" and so forth, backed up my PST file, opened Outlook, deleted all the addresses from my Outlook address book, then imported the PST file. Worked like a charm — except all the street addresses were missing! Names, phone numbers, cities, states, zips all there, but no address numbers, no street names. Not too helpful with a mapping program! ;-) So deleted the PST file and renamed the backup PST to get my addresses back. Oh, well, was worth the effort.

Mr. Toad

Hmm...sounds like a Microsoft issue. I have a freeware sync program that I run occasionally to sync my Outlook contacts with my Google contacts (I use Google as my "master" record, because it easily and automatically stays synced with my iPhone contacts), and there are sometimes problems with Outlook contacts. One thing that always comes up is the inability to sync information stored in the "Notes" field in Google with the corresponding field in Outlook.

I'm curious whether you'd have better luck with exporting your iPhone contacts and performing the update with that file. I do all my edits in Google and it automatically makes the same adjustments on my iPhone.

The_Judge

I agree in part — it's a Micro$oft issue, but it's also a problem with the MB software. Outlook classifies and arranges addresses as "home," "business," etc., but the individual data fields (e.g., street, state, etc.) aren't shown. By extracting the Outlook data to a CSV file, I saw that there are separate fields for each type of address and each field within that type (e.g., business street, business house number, home street, home house number, etc.). Makes a lot of sense, but it's apparently too complex for the MB software to handle.

Beyond that, in my view it's really idiotic that MB would write and market software that, for example, recognizes only "Ave" fails to recognize "Avenue" or "Ave." (Same with "Street," full state names, etc.) Someone suggested to me that the [program was probably written in German and then translated to English, which might explain part of the problem.

Anyway, for software that operates a significant function in cars costing $50K and up, it's really a disappointment.

Mr. Toad

Oh, please don't misunderstand - I agree completely that there's a problem with the MB software! I only mean there was a Microsoft problem with the data export/import process. The "abbreviations only, with no punctuation" constraint coded by MB is ridiculous.