Excel 2010 - Barcodes in a spread sheet

Embed and automate a barcode in a Excel 2010 document

A short description of how to add a barcode to an Excel document and link the barcode with a cells content.

First launch Excel and create a new document or open an already existing document.

Make sure that you have configured your Excel, that the "Developer" tab is shown in the ribbon. If not, go to the Excel Options: Click here on the tab "File". With it you change to the preventer view. Then click on "options" on the left:

Activate "menu tape customize" and then activate the option "Developer tools" inside the main tabs and then close the option window.

Now you can embed the ActiveBarcode control element into your Document. Select Developer tab. Click on the button "Insert" from the range of "Controls" and then select "More controls" there.

A dialog box appears on the screen:

Select "ActiveBarcode" now and click "Ok". Now a barcode will be created inside your document. This will be a standard barcode of EAN-128 type. This is the default type. You can change this to any barcode type supported by ActiveBarcode: Codabar, Code 25 Industrial, Code 25 Interleaved, Code 39, Code 39 Extended, Code 93, Code 93 Extended, Code 128, Data Matrix, DUN-14, EAN-2, EAN-5, EAN-8, EAN-13, EAN-14, EAN-18, EAN-99, EAN 128, EAN-Velocity, GS1-128, GTIN-8, GTIN-12, GTIN-13, GTIN-14, Identcode, ISBN-10, ISBN-13, ISBN-13 Dual, Bookland, ISSN, ISMN, ITF-14, JAN, Leitcode, MSI, NVE, PDF417, PostNet, PZN, Royal Mail SCC-14, SSCC-18, UCC-128, UPC-A and UPC-E

Now you can modify this barcode. You can change the type, text, colors etc. For this click inside the barcode with the right mouse button. A pop up menu will open: 

Select "ActiveBarcode-Object" and then "Properties...". The property dialog of ActiveBarcode will open. Here you can modify the barcode as you like.

Alternatively you can use the property dialog of Excel. For this use the following button named "Properties" of the "Controls" range:

Create a link between a cell and the barcode: Open the property dialog of Excel as described above. Now activate the barcode object by clicking onto it once. The property dialog will now display all the properties of the barcode object. Have a look for the property named "LinkedCell". This allows a link between a cell and the barcode:

Enter the cell's name for the link into this property. That's it!

The ActiveBarcode Control is 32bit and can be used with the 32bit (x86) version of Office 2010 only.

Microsoft itself recommends to install the 32bit (x86) instead of the 64bit (x64) version of the Office 2010 package. This is valid, even if you use a 64bit (x64) operating system.