label designer issues

the label designer is a shody tool and works in a limited fashion. i have discussed this with a number of people, and you have few options.

-try the small print and get a hi quality print. For barcodes to scan they need white space up to the thickness of a md. or lg. sized bar, on both the left & rt. sides. A barcode that goes right to the edge is not good, it may never scan.

-check the actual print preview bars on your print job for a label, to the bars shown in the Item\General Tab\Barcode - the item barcode in Item Properties is the Item Lookup Code as it should appear as the barcode you chose. Is any part of the bar missing on your label print job? Check closely.

The barcode you are designing can be stretched or shrunk, however look closely when you do this with the barcode field.

Stretch it until it changes size, once, then keep going until it changes again. Shrink it until it reduces in size once then twice, back to where you had it. Notice the amount of shrink or change is the same each time you do it. Notice the barcode does not enlarge or shrink with every little move of the field, but it seems to move in amounts or increments up to about 1/8" or so...maybe even 1/4". The increment of change you see when you stretch or shrink it is the ONLY increment available whaen shrinking or enlarging your particular Item Lookup Code, in the particular barcode format you selected. The length of the ItemLookup Code affects the graphic a lot - the graphic representation of a 11 digit 128-A code cannot be shrunk very small and still print well using thermal transfer or even thermal.

But less than 11 digits should be fine, on even tiny labels.

-try printing the long way instead of left to right, although it may look cheesy on your label.

It isnt you, its the damm tool-a lot of barcode software is sold online, none of it over $50. The stuff just isnt quality software. This MSFT Designer is based on Avery formats - those are fairly large in comparison to most retail tags, and its great for UPS type labels.

We are having to retool all our barcodes because this happened to us and we use a label thats 3.75 tall, by 1.34 across.

128-A just wont fit, and if it does, it wont print right. Other formats do different things and you should scan them before running them.

Ex. - 128B & C will pad an extra zero in the barcode, on the left, to have even digits as the barcode, if your Item Lookup is odd number of characters.

But this will not scan in RMS - because the ItemLookupCode isnt padded with a zero-its still an odd number-the barcode number is different. How do you tell? Scan the item at the POS-it appears for half a second onscreen-then disappears. Means something is in the DB, but what? Go to that item, add a zero to its Lookup Code, on the left, and it will scan and appear onscreen..

g'luck, you need it.

FYI - Barcode generally expands from the right edge towards the right, and it shrinks in the opposite direction, still from the right edge.

Use the twips measurement > how can you make a barcode a specific width in the label designer? with an

thanks luke. I did find a workaround though! for anyone interested....

for small bar codes use UPCA!

Code 128A and Code3of9 couldn't scan with 11 digits crammed in less than

0.75".

I found out by looking at the code in an old Generic/Text .lbl file we used to use--you know that these files allow you to size the barcodes much more precisely than the label designer...i found out that we used to print in UPCA format. Finally!

k

inches,

Kamal --

Do you know if your workaround with UPCA will work if my ILC's have letters mixed in with numbers? If not I guess I'm stuck with 128A...

Thanx

-=RFM=-

"Kamal Hood" wrote: