You have a number of options. You can either convert the TDS file format into an ascii, txt, or csv. There are some other options as well but these are common ones. You can then load the text file into GIS and then Geocode the points into GIS using the x and y values. Another option is If you download the Toplink software (free) from TOPCON you can convert from a native TDS cr5, rw5, job format straight into a shapefile along with a number of other formats that can be converted. A nice utility if you are going to be doing a lot of this type of work.

If you need more detailed help email me directly at timdig@gmail.com. Tell me what software you are using to get the data off the RECON (Active sync, surveylink, etc) Tell me which GIS software and version you are using. Hope this helps.

Good luck

Well, I found out the my school (University of Tennessee Chattanooga) has student licenses for ESRI ArcMap ArcGIS. It's pretty sweet, except for loading map data and imagery from the web (my net connection is SLOW!) I've got the file XLS with all of the survey points, a couple of which had GPS coordinates. So we took one of those points and searched for it and found it on the imagery, used that point (500N 500E) as a reference, converted to UTM and added/subtracted 20m (our test pit spacing) and got a sweet looking grid. Now, for my next question. ArcMap seems to only be able to pull imagery from the web. I tried saving the .lyr file and it still is pulling from the ESRI server. Can I not download a giant .lyr file with the imagery that I need so I can search for a GPS coordinate (so I'm assuming it has to be a GeoTIFF or something of the sort) so no net connection is required, yet I can still zoom in and out? Thanks!

Saving imagery from the web may be possible it depends on the data source. Saving a layer file will not download the data it just downloads the location. Many of the esri sites don't allow download of data. However depending on where you are working and the level of data you can download imagery data to store on your machine. I would recommend going to http://datagateway.nrcs.usda.gov/ here you can download a great deal of data you can choose what type of data you need. There are several imagery products. It is free you just have to sign up pick a data set and within 24 hours they will email you a link to a ftp site to download the data. Then you would have a image you could load from your computer instead of the web. Some of the iamges are large and may take time to download but then you would have them. There are a number of dataset for free all over i would see if any department at the university have basedata for the area you are interested in. Hope this helps.