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Get Driving Guidance for a route

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Before you can use the Driving Guidance feature with MapPoint, the program must be able to determine your position by using a GPS receiver, you must have created a route to follow, and your position must be at the start of the route or somewhere along the route.

  1. With the GPS task pane open and your GPS receiver getting a signal, select the Start GPS tracking check box, and then click the Provide Driving Guidance check box.

    Note  The Driving Guidance pane displays at the bottom of the window when you activate Provide Driving Guidance. You can close and reopen the Driving Guidance pane at any time by clicking Driving Guidance pane Driving Guidance button on the Standard toolbar. Doing so will not stop or start the Driving Guidance function.

  2. In the GPS task pane, set any other options, such as whether you want the map to stay centered on your position as you travel or change dynamically to provide the best possible view of the next turn.

  3. If a speech engine is installed on your computer, spoken instructions are on by default when you start Driving Guidance for the first time. If you prefer to use text instructions only, click Turn Voice Off or press F7. When you use Driving Guidance again, the same setting will be used. You can restart spoken instructions by clicking Turn Voice On or pressing F7 again.

When Driving Guidance is running, it provides driving instructions until you reach your destination, until you clear the Provide Driving Guidance check box or the Start GPS tracking check box, or until your GPS receiver loses its signal. As your position changes, the next instruction is automatically displayed in the Driving Guidance pane below the map and spoken.

If an instruction includes a distance, such as turn left in 500 yards, a progress bar at the bottom of the Driving Guidance pane indicates how close you are to the turn. The color of the progress bar matches the color of the route segment.

To hear a spoken instruction again, click Repeat Instruction in the GPS task pane or press SPACEBAR. To hear the next instruction after the current one, double click Repeat Instruction or press SPACEBAR twice.

Notes

Instructions that are included in a route for informational purposes are not spoken or displayed in the Driving Guidance pane. This type of instruction includes scheduled rest stops, day start and endpoints for multi-day trips, and notices indicating that you are entering or leaving a particular region.

To use the Driving Guidance feature, your computer must support a screen resolution of at least 1024 by 786 pixels. At lower resolutions, the control buttons on the GPS task pane do not display.

To use voice instructions, your computer must be running Windows® XP operating system. Otherwise, the instructions display in the Driving Guidance pane, but they are not spoken. MapPoint includes a speech engine; however you can use a different one as long as it is Speech API (SAPI) compatible.

About speech engines

Work with the Driving Guidance pane

See your current location using GPS

Troubleshoot using Driving Guidance