Reading a bar code into a cell in an Excel spreadsheet is trivially
easy. You just need to get a bar code scanner that has a "keyboard
wedge interface". With this type of scanner, the data from the bar
codes is entered into Excel (or any other program running on your PC)
as if it were being entered on the keyboard. You simply put the cursor
in the cell where you want the bar code data to appear and scan the
bar code. The data will pop in just as if it were being typed in on
the keyboard.
To learn more about the different bar code scanner interfaces
available, visit:
http://www.taltech.com/products/interface.htm

When you say that you want to read a bar code into an Excel cell as a
bar code, I assume that you want to generate a bar code in the
spreadsheet using the data from a bar code scanner as the data to
encode in the bar code. If this is the case then you would also need a
tool for generating bar codes in Excel. There are several options
available for this including fonts and bar code ActiveX controls. Bar
code fonts are more difficult to use because they do not sutomatically
calculate check digits or add start and stop patterns to your bar
codes so you would have to write some code that processes the data
first before encoding it into a bar code font. Bar code fonta also
produce poor quality bar codes therefore you are much better off using
a bar code ActiveX control to create bar codes in Excel.
The best bar code ActiveX control on the market is available from TAL
Technologies and you can download a demo version complete with a
sample Excel spreadsheet that shows how to use it in Excel at:
http://www.taltech.com/products/activex_barcodes.html



On Mon, 5 Sep 2005 03:05:02 -0700, basinghughes
wrote:

I would like to know if you can:
Read a bar code into an excel cell as a number?
Read a bar code into an excel cell as a bar code?

How easy is it to achieve?
What do I need to purchase in order to make this work?

I have Microsoft Office Professional 2003