Did you know that you can use Microsoft Word to create your own barcodes? Making your own barcodes is actually cool and pretty easy. Once you receive the barcode, you can stick it on whatever you want and then scan it with a physical barcode scanner or smartphone by downloading the app.
There are several different types of barcodes and I will try to show you how to create as many barcodes as possible for free. You will need specialized commercial software to create certain types of barcodes, so I will not mention them. The most common 1D barcodes are Code 39, Code 128, UPC-A, UPC-E, EAN-8, EAN-13, etc. 2D barcodes include DataMatrix, PDF 417, and QR codes.
To create a barcode, you must install a barcode font on your system and then use that font in any program that supports fonts such as Word, WordPad, etc.
Download Barcode Font
The first step is to download the barcode font and install it on your system. Either you can search Google for barcode fonts or you can download the one you want from these sites below. I suggest most people use Code 39, Code 128 or QR Code fonts as they are the most popular and easiest to scan.
Code 39 is best for very short text, only a few characters. You will notice that the barcode becomes very long very quickly with Code 39. Code 128 can handle a lot more text and the barcode will remain relatively small. With QR codes, you can store a large amount of data and the size of the square will increase depending on the amount of data.
However, there are a few caveats regarding the use of barcodes in Word. Most 1D barcodes require a start and end character in the barcode to be scannable. For Code 39, all you have to do is add a start character (*) to the front and back of the text.
For example, if you download a Code 39 barcode, you must enter * Hello * to generate a scannable barcode that will read the word Hello when scanned. If you want to include a space in a Code 39 barcode, you must use the equal (=) symbol. So, you will need to type * Hello = John * in Word to get the Hello John text when scanned.
It’s not that simple for Code 128. Besides the start and stop symbols, you also need some special checksum symbols. Unfortunately, you cannot enter them yourself and you will have to encode the text into the correct format first and then paste it into Word. I’ll walk you through the steps below.
With QR codes and Word, the main problem is that each square of the code will only be one letter. This is because it is a font in Word, which means that each letter must have its own symbol. Thus, when using the QR code font, a five-letter word, such as “hello”, will look like this in Word:
A single QR code can actually store a lot of data, but that’s only if you generate the QR code with third-party software or with a free online barcode generator If you’re going to use Word, you’ll have to live with a single QR code that only stores one letter, number, or symbol.
Code 39:
http: //www.barcodesink.com/free-barkodefont/
http: //www.dautomation.com/free-barkode-product/kodezya-font/
Code 128:
http: //vvv.dafont.com/code-128.font
http: //vvv.zhtbarton.com/Barkodes/Sode128.asps
http: //www.barcodelink.net/barcode-font.php
QR code:
http: //vvv.dafont.kom/kr-font-tfb.font
Install Barcode Font
After you’ve downloaded the font, it is usually included in the ZIP archive. Navigate to your downloads folder in File Explorer, right-click on the archive and select “Extract All”.
Open the folder and you can see several files, one of which ends in TTF, which stands for True Type font. Double click on the font file and a window will open with barcode font in different sizes.
Click the Install button at the top and the font will be installed in the C: Windows Fonts folder. You will have to close Word and reopen it to see the new font installed.
Depending on which barcode font you are downloading, you may only see the barcode in the font list, or you will see the name and then the image of the barcode on the right. Your barcode font is installed and ready to use!
Create barcodes in Word
Now let’s move on to the fun part. Let’s start by creating a Code 39 barcode in Word. To do this, I downloaded and installed the IDAutomation Code 39 font, which adds the text you enter to the bottom of the barcode. Everyone else just shows a barcode, but I am using this one for educational purposes.
First enter the desired text into the barcode. For example, enter * John = Doe * as shown below.
Go ahead and increase the font size to something larger, such as 20 or 28. Now select the text and then select the Code 39 font from the list. The text should automatically convert to a barcode and you will see the text at the bottom for that particular barcode.
You will notice that the equal sign in the barcode is converted to a space. You now have a scannable code 39 barcode! It’s very simple. Go to the Scanning a Barcode section to find out how you can scan it using a smartphone app.
Now let’s try to create a Code 128 barcode. First, select a Code 128 font from the list above, download and install it. Once you have done this, you need to go to the next website to encode the text into the appropriate format.
Enter the text in the “Data for encoding” field and click the “Code 128” button in the upper left corner. Corresponding text will be generated in the Encoded Text box, which you can then copy and paste into Word. Make sure to increase the font size to 48 or 72.
Now select the text and change it to the Code 128 barcode font you installed. He has to create a beautiful barcode that can then be scanned. The only problem I ran into was spaces in Code 128 barcodes. When using the online encoder, it uses a special character for the space, but when I converted it to a barcode, the special character remained and was not converted to a space. Couldn’t figure out how to fix this, so if you figure it out, let us know!
The same can be done for QR codes or any other type of barcode. The Barcode Encoder website is also helpful for generating Code 93, UPC-E and other barcode formats.
Barcode scanning
If you have a physical barcode scanner, you can obviously just use it to scan your barcodes, but if you are doing this as a personal home project, you may not have one. In these cases, you can download free barcode scanner apps to your phone to scan barcodes.
What’s really nice about these apps is that you can create a barcode on your computer and scan them with the app before even printing them out. This way you can first check if they can be scanned.
My favorite iPhone app is Beep, a very simple barcode scanner that supports many different types of barcodes. It’s fast, free, and works great.
When it scans a barcode, it will tell you the type of barcode (Code 39, 128, etc.) and show the text in the upper left corner. As far as Android goes, I haven’t used any of them myself, but there are a lot of apps on the Google Play store, so you can try different ones.
I hope this guide was enough to get you started with barcodes in Word. If you have any problems, feel free to leave comments and I’ll try to help. Enjoy!
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