postal barcodes in fox

[jhall251]

I'm researching the cost and feasibility of printing mailing labels with postal barcodes from either vfp or word mailmerge. As we are a hardhit non-profit I am looking for free, shareware or inexpensive solutions. Any & All tips appreciated!

Joe Halloran

 

[Mike Gagnon]

jhalloran

There are plenty of Free barcode fonts in the internet. Do a search. Barcode is just that, just another font. As far as a program to generate it? Are you a VFP programmer?

Mike Gagnon

If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ184-2483 first.

 

[rgbean]

While I couldn't find a free source of the Postal Barcode font,

http://www.savepostage.com/barfont.html

has it for $10!

Opps, I spoke too soon - here's a free one -

http://www.adams1.com/pub/russadam/shareware/uspsbarcode.ttf

- but don't know how good it is.

Rick

 

[jhall251]

Thanks both -

>Are you a VFP programmer?
Close enough <s> - sounds like I can use a Postal Barcode font from the Internet and just put the zip in that font? I assume there must be a USPS format? Also the reason for doing this is that the mailing will cost less - is a barcoded zip enough to reduce cost or do you need Delivery Point (which sounds more complex to program?)

Thanks!

Joe Halloran

 

[Mike Gagnon]

jhalloran

Joe,

I don't your experience in VFP, but if you have a table with names,address etc...in a format readable easely in VFP like either a textfile or a dbf table, to produce a label for an envelop (no user interface to input new ones) would take no more then 5-10 minutes, bacode or not. If you need a simple form to add new records on top of that, I would say 1/2 to an hour you have a working exe. But again it depends on your level of understanding VFP. The barcode here being is not relevant in the complexity.

Mike Gagnon

If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ184-2483 first.

 

[jhall251]

I'm sorry - I should have been more clear - I have been programming in fox for many years but in vfp only a year or so - so I can get around but am no guru - it sounds like all I need to do is put the zipfield in the barcode font?

I note that the word mailmerge tool has a barcode feature in the dialog. Any gotchas with feeding a dbf or xls file of names and addresses to word and letting it do the postal bar code generation?

Thanks again for your advice!!

Joe Halloran

 

[jjtaylor]

While it is very easy to print the zipcode with a barcode font, I am not at all sure if you will save at the postoffice with that alone. It has been a few years since I worked on an application doing the postal barcode. You can get all the specifics from your postmaster regarding size, position, and other requirements. I believe a 3x9 barcode font works but don't hold me to it. I would expect you can also find the information you want at the USPS web site. Before committing a lot of resources in one direction do check with your postmaster about your plans. Our application was used at 300 plus cities and out of those a 4 or 5 postmasters required minor tweaking of what all the others found acceptable.

On my past application we did delivery point barcoding with carrier route sort. A subscription service was required for address verification and to generate route information. At that time mail volume had to be around 1000 pcs a month to pay for the subscription service. Some may be cheaper now. The address software worked with the VFP files by conditioning certain fields and we then printed the addresses directly from fox.

 

[jhall251]

thanks - I will check with usps - sounds sufficiently complex (the usps part not the barcoding per se) that it may be better to give the names to a mailing house.

Joe Halloran

 

[powerprinting]

I run a mailing house operation. If you have mailings of at least 200 pieces or more, money can be saved using barcoded automated rate mail. However, the rules are fairly complex as how to prepare the mail, the positioning of the barcode and many other factors to go into here. A reputable mail house will be able to tell you if you can save money paying them to sort your mail for you. Good luck. As for barcode fonts, you will almost always find the font already installed on your PC. Look for USPS in your list of fonts, that is the proper font. Use it at 11pt. Simply enter the 10+dpc digits in the proper postition on your document ex: 45356-555526 and specify it to print USPS font. Good luck

 

[Kurjo]

You can mailmerge from the word getting the informtion from a dbf file. Store the address inculding the zip code in a table or XLS Sheet and use it as the data source for mailmerge.

 

[dc509]

Postage Saver has inexpensive mailing software. There is also a tutorial at their site.

http://bulkmail.info/presort.html

Microsoft Office 2000 small business version comes with Direct Mail Manager. It will do some automated (postnet barcode) mailings. This program is actually sold by Envelope Manager. I think this is a limited version - 1000 mail pieces or less.

http://www.envelopemanager.com/

There are more mailing programs out there, but these are the least expensive that I have found.

David