Barcode font not read by scanner? 1

[boxboxbox]

Our scanner is a QuickScan QS2500 and can read most barcodes on things. Our barcode printer is a Cognitive DelSolLX.

I am printing the barcodes from Access - I installed a Code 128 font and a 39 font in Access that I downloaded from the Grand Zebu site that has been recommened here before.

My scanner is not reading the barcodes that I am printing. I have tried various font sizes (above 45, even), but I don't know how to edit the density or anything else.

I assume these are good fonts, but I don't know if it is just my scanner or the barcode printer (if I print the same barcode on my regular printer, the scanner still can't read it). These are all new toys (except for the Access).

Suggestions?

Thanks,
Amanda

 

[67peshawar294]

amanda,
If you haven't already, download the demo program(s) and see if your scanner will read the results. You need the VB to encode the barcodes. Scanners will not read just a series of numbers. enter the VB in a Module and reference the control to the Function.
I have not talked to him for a while but Jean Marie is a great guy and has really done the Access/Excel world a great favor. Don't forget to "thank" him.
Jim

 

[boxboxbox]

I got the code 39 to work (I had left off the surrounding asterisks), but on some barcodes it prints boxes instead of lines...usually if I try putting letters after the numbers, though letters at the beginning encode just fine...?

I haven't downloaded the demo yet, but I printed my screen of that page (for 128) and my scanner couldn't read it.

Will send a note to Jean Marie in a bit.

Thanks.

 

[DansDadUK]

If you are getting 'box' characters instead of the expected barcode symbols, this implies that you are selecting the wrong characters to print.

The 'box' character is almost certainly what is known as a galley character, which is used to indicate that a request has been made to print a character which is not present in the selected font.

With simple barcodes like 'Code 39', the range of 'allowed' characters is limited to upper-case alphabetic characters, digits, and a few punctuation, all of which are present in the 7-bit ASCII subset of all standard 8-bit and 16-bit Western character sets.

But with other barcodes like 'Code 128', or 'Interleaved 2 of 5', the range of allowed symbols may be different.

For example, in the 'Interleaved 2 of 5' font, the defined symbols represent 100 'digit-pair' symbols, plus start and stop characters; how these are 'mapped' to the character set used on your workstation may vary between fonts supplied by different font vendors.

 

[boxboxbox]

You are wonderful! I figured it was something like that, but I don't think I'd have tried to test with capitals, instead of lower case (which was the problem). Doumo Arigatou!