Zebra Label Printers and Access

[Andi Plotsky]

Does anyone have any experience with using a Zebra Printer with Access? Any
tips on how to get them to "jive"?

Andi Plotsky

[David Fleming]

"Andi Plotsky" <iris...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:VF528.13145$Y17.7...@e3500-atl2.usenetserver.com...

I have a warehouse management system at one of my clients that works with
four zebra printers with no problems. Setting up the labels can be a bit
time consuming to get everything right. I find you have to set the margins
to 0 to get things to line up proper. Also if you change between label sizes
often then it can be a bit annoying (the reason this site has four zebra
printers).
David Fleming

[Tony Toews]

"Andi Plotsky" <iris...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>Does anyone have any experience with using a Zebra Printer with Access? Any
>tips on how to get them to "jive"?

A client has one and I don't recall any specific problems with them. We're printing
bar codes nicely.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm

[Eric Hart]

This is a little code snippet that works for me:

----------------
Dim LabelStr As String
LabelStr = "^XA^LH0,100^FT0,12^GB1000,0,3^FS^FT150,130^AGN,120,100^FD" & RPN
& "^FS^FT0,150^GB1000,0,3^FS^FT150,175^AFN^FD" & Me.Offcut_Size_Barcode & "
" & Me.Material_Barcode & "^FS^ISR:OFFCUT.GRF,N^XZ^XA^ILR:OFFCUT.GRF,N^XZ"
Open "lpt1:" For Output As #1
Print #1, LabelStr
Close #1
----------------------

Obviously the text in the second line is the coding as found in the users
manual to place the text and the barcode in the correct position. This may
vary a bit from model to model so it might be worth a visit to www.zebra.com
for the latest info on this.

I found this to be easier than writing a report and then using the Windows
driver but your mileage may vary on this one.

HTH
Eric Hart
Perth, Western Australia

"Tony Toews" <tto...@telusplanet.net> wrote in message
news:lo4n4ug96jbrgll4r...@4ax.com...

[Bob Lounsbury]

Andi,

If you want to control a Zebra using the native ZPL language, you will
probably need to install in on Windows as a generic text-only printer.
My experience is that if you don't do that, Windows tosses all kinds
of formatting commands into the data stream and your carefully
constructed command strings get trampled.

You can download the current ZPL manual at www.zebra.com. Creating an
Access report is just a matter of formatting a series of strings with
the appropriate control sequences.

If you prefer to avoid ZPL, my personal recommendation would be to not
try to format a barcode label in Access. I have done it often enough,
and I am sure the experiences have done nothing to improve my stress
level. My preference is to use a label program like Bar Tender for
designing the label, and then initiating the print operation from
within Access (use the Shell() function). You can write variable data
to a temporary table ahead of time and Bar Tender will insert it in
the label. Bar Tender is efficient and gives good results because it
uses the internal Zebra barcode functions.

If you do decide to work with ZPL (which, by the way, will give you
the best overall performance) but have complicated labels, you can use
a label design package and print to a file. You can use the resulting
file as a guide for creating your ZPL code.

Info re. various label design software at
http://www.makebarcode.com/software/packages.html

Hope this helps.

Bob Lounsbury
The Barcode Software Center
www.makebarcode.com

"Andi Plotsky" <iris...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message news:<VF528.13145$Y17.7...@e3500-atl2.usenetserver.com>...

[Warner Smidt]

I have used Label Matrix as the label design and print engine on a few
Access DB projects. It works great. I have not used Bar Tender, but it is
a similar competing product. If you use ZPL, then it will only work with
Zebra printers supporing ZPL. LM or BT have drivers for over 400 label
printers. By using these products you don't have to mess with keeping up
with ZPL or other printer language changes plus you can use these products
to design the label. The label is saved as a template file. From Access
you give a shell command to call the label print engine by telling which
printer (if there are multiple ones on the network); which label; which
data; number of labels--presto, the labels are printed.
Warner Smidt

"Bob Lounsbury" <r...@makebarcode.com> wrote in message
news:d0a0311b.02012...@posting.google.com...