Sometimes, we have to add barcodes to various parts of a document such as Microsoft Word or even in a picture. These barcodes can be scanned using a barcode scanner machine when these documents are scanned. However, it is not very straightforwards to add barcodes to just about any document using the various software and plugins.
The easiest way to add barcodes to any document by the use of special fonts which are available for free on the internet. We can install these fonts on our Windows PC and then use them in any Microsoft Office or LibreOffice document. Here is how it can be done:
- First of all we have to get a barcode font. This can be done easily by visiting https://www.fontspace.com/ and searching for “barcode”. For example, we found a public domain font there which can be used for commercial purposes too – https://www.fontspace.com/bar-code-39-font-f28432,
- After downloading the font ZIP file to your Windows PC, extract it to a folder using 7-Zip, right-click over the font file (BarCode39Lesbar-3yDM.tff) and choose to Install it. If you have administrator privileges, then you can also choose to Install for all users from the context-menu.
- Once the font has been installed, we can use it in any document or picture editor. For example, we can open a DOCX or ODT document in LibreOffice Writer, enter in the number and then change the font for that number to Bar-code 39 Lesbar and it automatically converts into a barcode graphic.
We can create printable labels containing barcodes using this method. When you are adding barcodes to your images in this way, there is no reason to embed fonts. But when creating PDF files, we must ensure that we embed the fonts within the PDF file so that it contains all the fonts needed to display the document correctly.