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Adding Special Characters

When you enter a value or add a variable to a property, you also have the option to append special characters to the value or variable by using the Insert Symbols or Special Characters dialog . This feature is supported for any property for which you see the insert variable controls ( and ). To open the dialog, click next to the insert variables control , and then click Special Character on the dropdown menu.

Using Special Characters

The most important reason for using special characters is to encode data into a barcode. Some barcodes have encoding rules that require special characters. The Data Matrix barcode, for example, separates data into groups by using the Group Separator (GS) special character. There is no keyboard equivalent for this character; it must be added by using the Insert Symbols or Special Characters dialog in BarTender or Integration Builder.

Another use for special characters is to insert them as a newline. A newline is a character or characters that are used as a line break, such as the carriage return (CR) or line feed (LF) characters.

ClosedExample of using special characters as line breaks

Suppose you have created a BarTender document that contains a QR Code barcode and have assigned a data source name to the QR Code to make it a named data source.

  1. Create an integration that has a Print Document action.

  2. On the Print Document action property page, under Document, browse to and then double-click the BarTender document that you created.

  3. Under Named Data Sources, click to select the Specify Values for Named Data Sources check box.

  4. In the Name cell, enter the name of the named data source that you previously created.

  5. In the Value cell, enter your value data. In between the value data items, use the Insert Symbols or Special Characters dialog to insert CR and LF characters. The following example uses "First", "Second", and "Third" as the data:

First<<CR>><<LF>>Second<<CR>><<LF>>Third

This operation causes the data in the named data source to be broken into three separate lines. When the printed barcode is scanned, the scanner will read the barcode's data on three separate lines.

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