Abstract: A route-planning method and a navigational system of converting a route description into a machine-readable predefined route are provided. Keywords in the route description are identified and one or multiple maneuvers are extracted from the route description in a spreadsheet format based on the keywords. The spreadsheet format includes a plurality of columns and rows associated with a current location, a starting point, an ending point, a total distance and a type of the maneuver. A tree of possible routes in the machine-readable format is created based on a mapping database. Each route contains the one or multiple maneuvers. The machine-readable format contains a plurality of via-point coordinates associated with each segment in the one or multiple maneuvers according to the mapping database. A most appropriate route is selected from the tree of possible routes as the machine-readable pre-defined route using a ranking algorithm.