Hi all,

We recently purchased PE and will be working on implementing it over the next year or so. We are a membership-based organization and our members have cards which we print out of RE using the Membership Card function in mail. We have our cards set up to "Create custom data file" and then we merge this information into Microsoft Word and print the cards/letters from there. We hadn't been printing barcodes on our membership cards, but I wanted to start doing that so that once we are up and running with PE, we'll be able to start scanning membership cards without mailing new cards to all of our 9,000 members. 

In asking some initial questions, my rep informed us that there is an issue with printing membership cards in Word 2007 -- the membership barcode can't be scanned in PE. I contacted support and they said there really isn't a workaround in the works, since the problem is with Microsoft and not with PE. They recommended buying Blackbaud's pre-printed forms, which don't present the same problem since they are printed directly from RE instead of being exported into Word first.

Has anyone encountered this problem, and does anyone have any advice about a workaround? I could buy the pre-printed forms, or even order from a different printer, but I don't like the format of the pre-printed cards, still have a year's worth of existing cards left with no money in the budget to order more, etc etc etc. I could use some advice, as this is my first stumbling block (though I know I will encounter more) and I'm a little frustrated.

Thanks!

Hi Lisa,

I'm not familiar with how your are using Word 2007 to print out barcodes, but we ran into something similar when doing our membership card implimintation.  We use Crystal Reports straight out of PE to print our membership cards.

The issue is a barcode is not just the numbers which make up the membership code - there needs to be an added Start, Stop, and checksum character.  For instance if you were to create a barcode for the word 'biz' you would actually need to use the characters 'ÌbizgÎ' to create a readable barcode.  So, if you are simply exporting the membership number, and applying a barcode font it will be missing these start, stop and checksum characters and the scanners will not read it.

 We ended up having Blackbaud do a customization for us to get the Crystal Report working properly but there are packages out there which will allow you to calculate the barcodes in word or excel.  (Something like this:  http://www.idautomation.com/fonts/code128/ ).  The datasheet link from that webpage also describes in more detail about barcode creation.

 Hope that helps,

 Jason Nate

The Calgary Zoo

Thanks for your reply! This info is helpful. I'm not sure if that's specifically the issue, but I will check with Blackbaud about it. I did a quick test by printing one barcode out of RE and one using Word, and they both look exactly the same, including the first and last characters. There could be differences I can't see with my naked eye, so I will check on this. It's good to know that Blackbaud was able to create a customization to get things working for you.

Anyone else have experience with this issue?

Thanks,

Lisa

No experience, just something to try - try different font barcodes.