ExcelBanter - How to create barcodes in excel?

A bar code is generally more complex that just changing the font.
Bar codes contain special start and stop patterns and most types of
bar codes also use a very complex algorithm for producing the correct
bar/space pattern in the bar code for a given message being encoded.
The only type of bar code that can be implemented using a font without
having to write any code to process the message data first is Code 39
and even with Code 39 you still need to include start and stop
characters (usually an asterisk) at the beginning and the end of the
message before changing its font to a bar code font.
Even after you do this, you will still end up with a very low quality
bar code that may or may not read depending on a number of factors
(printer resolution, font size, how good your bar code scanner is,
etc.) Bar code fonts generally produce very poor quality bar codes.

The best way to add bar codes to an Excel spreadsheet is to use a tool
that generates a high resolution vector style image of a bar code.

TAL Technologies sells a product called B-Coder Professional that is
basically a bar code graphic generator. B-Coder produces very high
resolution Windows metafile images of all bar codes and it also takes
care of adding start/stop codes as well as all the complex details of
generating the correct bar code from a given message being encoded.

B-Coder also has a DDE interface that allows you to automate the
production of bar codes directly from within other programs like
Excel.
For example, you could have a very simple Excel macro that reads down
a column of bar code message data and converts each bar code message
to a bar code image that is inserted directly into the spreadsheet.

If you want very high quality bar codes that are guaranteed to be
readable then B-Coder would be the better way to go.
You can download a demo version of B-Coder Pro at the following web
page:
http://www.taltech.com/products/barcode_software.html

You can also find a very good Excel sample spreadsheet containing a
macro that generates bar codes directly in Excel using B-Coder at the
following URL:

http://www.taltech.com/support/bckb/txt2Barcode.xls

On Wed, 9 Feb 2005 10:01:05 -0800, "Trapper"
wrote:

In setting up an inventory worksheet, it would be very helpful to have
product numbers (SKU) in barcode format for scanning. Is it possible to
create barcodes within Excel?