Font or Picture or Object

Barcode Macros for Office can generate barcodes either as”objects”,  pictures, or as strings of text which are then displayed/printed in a special font made up of bars ands spaces. It is recommended that you give some consideration to the technique that most suits your needs by studying the following section.

Separate macros are provided for generating barcodes in these different forms:

FBarcode macros generate font-based barcodes

PBarcode macros generate picture barcodes.

Active Control Object macros and the control objects themselves generate pictures that can be changed dynmaically.

These three types are provided because each has advantages and disadvantages. It is essential for the user to understand which type is most appropriate for a particular application.

Picture barcodes provide barcode symbols that are the cosmetically appealing and can include within the picture the "human-readable text" that often appears under common barcodes. Also the pictures once created within a document, spreadsheet or database are part of the document and may be easily passed to another computer where they can be viewed or printed.

On the other hand pictures use memory, so a large spreadsheet containing thousands of barcode pictures will have a much larger file size than the spreadsheet without pictures.

Finally the mail-merge facility provided by Word is a text-based system and cannot use barcode pictures.

Font-based barcodes on the other hand take up no more file space than text and are suitable for use with mail-merge. However, font-based barcodes are not always as cosmetically appealing as pictures (for example, the characteristic elongated outer bars of retail barcodes are not reproduced by the font-based system), and the human-readable text is not included, so you may need to include it. Finally font-based barcodes require the presence of the font on the system that displays or prints the barcode – so documents with barcodes created on one system and sent to another system can only be viewed and printed if the receiving system has Barcode Macros for Office installed.

Active Control barcodes allow the barcode data to be modified dynamically and so are ideal for placing on an Access form or report and have all the cosmetic advantages of picture barcodes, but the disadvatnage that the the control must be present on the system that displays or prints the reports.

Users should note that different barcode types require different text as the source of the barcode. Thus EAN/UPC barcodes can only be used for numbers - and a specific number of digits at that. Code 39 supports only numbers and upper case letters, while extended Code 39 supports both upper and lower case letters. (See the Barcodes Help for details). So just selecting text at random will usually result in a message box informing you that there is an illegal character in the barcode source.

Note that, when using font-based barcodes, clocked barcodes (eg. Postnet or RM4SCC) must be created using the UNF font and using the recommended font heights which are:

Australia Post 16-17 point
Korean PA 26-28 point
PostNet/Planet 18 point
RM4SCC 16-17 point

 

More:

Initialising the Macros