Making and Printing Barcodes

A bar code is simply letters and numbers that a machine can read. For example, the text on this page could be rendered as a bar code, and then a machine could read it accurately and reliably.

In this case, the task is to create some ShipRush Shorthand bar codes for Pick and Pack. We know the text to want to encode, so how do we do that?

The simplest way: Download a free Code39 font, and use Notepad:

Download a free Code 39 bar code font: BarcodesInc or OpenBarcodes.
Open Notepad, enter your text with a leading and trailing * character:

*ZFW15L100D10H10O* (That is weight: 15 lbs, 10x10x10, Close Form)

Now in Notepad, select Format | Font, and select the Code 39 Enhanced font
Print the document
Scan with bar code scanner!

Some notes:

These free bar code fonts are font files. They are easy to install.
To print data, simply open Notepad, type in your data, change the font to the bar code font, and set the size to 18 points or larger
Code39 requires start and stop characters. The character is the asterisk ('*'). So to encode 'ORDER123' the data needs to read '*ORDER123*'

Presto! Now you are bar coding!

To test the system, the best way is to just print a document with some miscellaneous text and open the Test Scanner button in ShipRush Settings. Then scan it a few times to make sure ShipRush (and the scanner!) can read it.

If the scanner does not beep, the bar code is not scannable.

Using bar code fonts in Word often does not work. It seems that Word sneaks in some characters and breaks the bar code. The best way is to paste the needed ID into Notepad, with a leading and trailing '*' character, e.g.

*123456789*

Then in Notepad, change the document font to the bar code font (e.g. Code39 or Free 3 of 9), and set the font size to 20 or 30 pts. Print this document and it should scan fine.

Next: Ready-to-print Barcodes