FAQ - How to activate Travel Bugs, Geocoins and other Trackables

 

We receive a lot of questions about activating Travel Bugs, Geocoins, Decals and other "trackables", so we thought we'd help out by writing a specific FAQ on the subject.

 

What do you need before your start:

- The login details of your geocaching.com account. - Locate the tracking number on each of your trackables. The numbers and letter combinations may be quite small, and hard to read. On some geocoins the tracking code is located on the edge of the coin.

Step 1 - Login to Geocaching.com under the account that you want to own the trackables. If you have just one Geocaching.com account (most people do !), then login under that account. http://www.geocaching.com

Step 2 - Retrieve the activation code for your trackable - sometimes trackables have the activation code printed on the packaging or elsewhere. And sometimes they don't. But that's ok, there is a sure-fire way of retriving the code for each trackable. To retrieve the the activation code for any trackable - visit the Geocaching.com activation code retrieval page. Use the tracking code printed on your trackable to retrieve the activation code. Geocaching.com lost activation code retrieve

Step 3 - Register the trackable on Geocaching.com. While logged in to your Geocaching.com account visit the Geocaching.com Trackable Activation wizard. This process will step you through the activation of your trackable including the trackables description, goal (if any), activation location etc. Activating a Geocaching.com trackable

Step 4 - Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each of the trackables you wish to activate !

Step 5 - Place your trackable in a cache. and log that you have dropped it there with your find. A trackable may also just "visit" a cache - it is logged as being with you, but you retain possession of the trackable. To show that a trackable has been dropped into a cache, or visited a cache, use the pull-down menus at the very bottom of your cache log to indicate the activity for each of your trackable items. You can log many trackables at the same time. 

For more information visit geocaching.com