There are plenty of quick and easy ways to add bar code printing and
reading functionality to Access. You may have trouble finding a Free
way that works well however.
You might try using a free bar code font for printing your bar codes
however bar code fonts generally produce poor quality bar codes that
are difficult to read. The primary purpose of bar coding is to save
someone the trouble of typing in data. If your bar codes do not read
then you have to type them in anyhow.
For freeware bar code fonts you might try
www.barcode-1.com
For printing bar codes from Access, you would be best off using a bar
code ActiveX control like the one fromTAL Technologies at the
following URL:
http://www.taltech.com/TALtech_web/products/activex_barcodes.html
I would recommend that you download the demo of the TAL Bar Code
ActiveX control from the above URL and take a look at the sample
Access database that is provide with the demo.
For reading bar codes into an Access application, you have two
choices.
Most bar code readers are available with one of two output options.
The first option is called "Keyboard Wedge" output where you unplug
your keyboard, plug the bar code reader into the keyboard port on your
PC and then plug your keyboard into the bar code reader. This
arrangement makes the bar code reader appear as it it were simply a
second keyboard. Your original keyboard continues to work as normal
however when you read a bar code, the data encoded in the bar code
appears to any application running on your PC as if it were typed in.
The keyboard wedge interface is extremely simple however it has a few
drawbacks. If you swipe a bar code, the cursor has to be in the
correct input field in the correct application otherwise you end up
reading bar code data into whatever application has the focus. This
can cause all sorts of potential problems as you can imagine. The
keyboard output also is limited in that you cannot modify the data in
any way before sending it into the program that is to receive the
data. For example, if you needed to parse a bar code message up into
pieces or remove some of a bar code message or add in a date or time
stamp you would not be able to with a normal keyboard wedge reader.
The other possible output option is to get a bar code reader with an
RS232 or "Serial" interface. With these types of bar code readers, you
connect the reader to an available serial port on the back of your PC.
You would then need a program called a "Software Wedge" to take the
data from the bar code reader and feed it to the application where you
want the data to go. The disadvantage to this approach is that it is a
little more complex however you gain much more control over how and
where your data ends up when you read a bar code. With a Software
Wedge, you can control exactly where the data goes in the target
application and you can also perform all sorts of modifications on the
data before it is sent to the application.
TAL Tehchnologies sells a product called WinWedge which is a Software
Wedge for Windows. Visit:
http://www.taltech.com for more information.
This web site is also an extremely good place to obtain information
about bar coding in general.
