ASCII barcodes are used universally in the retail industry.
When purchasing an item from a store, a scanner attached to the computer or register scans a barcode label that provides price, description and inventory information to the computer and removes the sold item from inventory at the same time. Used by large corporations for pricing and inventory control, the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) barcode normally requires software, a scanner and barcode font to print, the pricing of which is out of reach for the small businessperson. A number of freeware programs available over the Internet allow anyone to produce her own ASCII barcodes using an online system or by downloading barcode fonts to your computer.
Instructions
Online Barcode Generator
1. Visit Barcodesinc.com, Barcode-soft.com or Barcoding.com to generate a barcode for free online.
2. Enter desired text into the input box of the barcode generator where it says "Input Text," "Barcode Data" or "Input for Barcode" or something similar. Enter letters, numbers or whatever characters desired and the generator translates all of it to barcode for you.
3. Click the button or select the option to generate barcode. An image appears on screen with a line of barcode and your desired text below it.
4. Save the image onto your computer, or copy and paste the image into a text file, email or other file. Save the image in whatever image file format desired.
Download Barcode Font
5. Download a barcode font straight to your computer if you plan to be creating barcodes on a regular basis. Navigate to Downloads3000.com, Adams1.com or DownloadAtoZ.com and download the software directly to your computer. Save the file to a location on your computer for easy access (see Resources).
6. Double-click on the folder from the location where you saved it and install in into the Fonts folder on your computer or open the unzipped folder marked for your operating system and copy or paste the files inside it into the "Fonts" folder. To get to the "Fonts" folder, select the "Start" button, then "Control Panel" on your computer, switch to "Classic View" and select the folder called "Fonts."
7. Start the word processor of choice and scroll down to the name of your barcode font. Begin typing, and notice the barcode rendered on your screen.
8. Print the barcode by selecting "Print" in the word processing software.
Tags: your computer, Fonts folder, ASCII barcodes, barcode font, copy paste, desired text
