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Barcode not displayed in Adobe Reader

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Level 1

Hello! Friends,

I have designed an adobe form using Livecycle ES3. The objective is to generate bar code after completing the form. Bar code gets generated in Livecycle.

But in Adobe Reader the bar code is generated only when the data is less. When the data is more then instead of bar code a grey bar is shown.

There are about 25 fields in the form. Tried this in Adobe Reader X (also tried in 9 & 8).

Any help/suggestion in this is highly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

6 Replies

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Former Community Member

There are two reasons why a barcode would gray out. The first reason, and the most important, is that the barcoded forms technology needs to be licensed via Reader Extensions. If you try to fill in a form that updates the barcode at runtime (during calculate and not initialize) and it has not been Reader Extended properly, it will gray out.

The second reason is due to the fact that the barcode grays out automatically when it is over capacity. Even if you have a small number of fields, on average with proper error correction you're looking at no more than 900 characters in a large barcode. You have a limited amount of space to work with so if your form is properly extended, then reduce the data or add another barcode.

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Level 1

Thanks leesutton for prompt reply.

Perhaps due to second reason mentioned by you the bar code is not getting generated. Will try to reduce the field names and check again.

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Level 1

Hi! Lee,

Was just going through some of the posts on Web on Adobe. In the below URL the you have mentioned PDF417 barcodes can store up to 2710 characters. So I'm confused a bit. Can you please clarify ?

 

http://www.taxadmin.org/fta/meet/06tech/06tech_pres/sutton.pdf

Thanks.

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Former Community Member

Hi, the original specifications from Symbol stated that you could hold 2710 characters. That said, this would be NO error correction and only numeric values. So technically not viable.

With proper sizing and error correction you'll be looking at around 900 characters.

My presentation here is a little dated, but still valid if you'd like to find out more about how storage works: https://my.adobeconnect.com/barcodedformselearningpdf417bestpractices/.

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Employee

To add to Lee's comments, barcode capacity in a form designed with Designer, can be impacted by compression, or lack there of, and the type of data being included, i.e. XML vs. text, and also whether collections (of fields) are being used or not. Make sure to set maxChar limits on your text fields that are included in the barcode dataset. Otherwise, you could reach capcity quickly even for a small amount of fields on a form. Including field labels in the barcode data can also impact capacity.

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Former Community Member

to add more on above.

make sure that you are using format as "delimited" not XML and also avoid including label in barcode.