How to Print Product Labels With Barcodes From a Spreadsheet

A barcode on a product or shelf label turns a manual lookup into a scan. It also removes a whole class of picking error, which is where most of the value is if you ship physical goods. Here's how to get from a spreadsheet to a printed sheet.

Step 1. Decide what the barcode encodes

Usually a SKU, an order number, or an internal asset ID. Whatever your system looks up. Two practical constraints:

• Keep it short. Every character adds width. A 10-character SKU on a small label is comfortable; a 30-character one is not.
• Keep it plain. Letters, digits, and simple punctuation encode reliably in Code 128. Accented characters and symbols don't.

If you need a retail barcode for scanning at a till, a UPC or EAN, that's a different format with a registered number, not something to generate yourself.

Step 2. Choose a sheet with room

This is where most people go wrong. A barcode needs vertical space for the bars and horizontal space for the full symbol including its quiet zones, on top of whatever text you want.

• 30-per-sheet address size. Workable with a short code and one line of text. Tight.
• 10-per-sheet shipping size. Comfortable: product name, SKU, price, and a barcode.
• 80-per-sheet small size. Text only. Don't try to fit a barcode.

When in doubt, go a size larger. A barcode squeezed until it won't scan is worse than no barcode.

Step 3. Lay out the label

Put human-readable text above the barcode. If a scan fails, someone reads the label instead, and that's much easier when the product name is at the top. A typical arrangement is product name, then SKU or price, then the barcode across the bottom.

Step 4. Test the scan before printing the batch

Print one sheet on plain paper and scan it with the device you'll use. A warehouse scanner and a phone camera have different tolerances. Check a few labels rather than just one, especially the longest code in your data.

If scans fail, the usual causes in order: the code is too long for the label, print scaling shrank the whole sheet, or the printer is low on toner and the bars have gaps. Set scaling to 100% and check toner before assuming the barcode itself is wrong.

Step 5. Print

Same rules as any label job: 100% scale, never "fit to page", and a plain-paper alignment check held against a real sheet. If you're printing part of a sheet, start at the first unused label rather than wasting the remainder. See why labels print slightly off if alignment gives you trouble.

If your product data is trapped in a scanned sheet rather than a spreadsheet, run it through the searchable PDF tool first so the text can be selected and copied.