Printing Barcodes

Laboratories with very large numbers of chemical containers may find using a scanner and barcodes advantageous in maintaining their inventories.

Using Barcodes for your chemical inventory is easy with ChemTracker.  The user can determine their preferred type of label, size of label and the container IDs used!

If the ChemTracker user does not assign something specific, ChemTracker automatically generates unique container IDs for chemicals entered into inventory.  This is the information to be used to generate barcodes.

There are a number of free barcode generators online.  Laboratories can use the software they find easiest.  Labels can then be printed locally in the lab and immediately applied to containers.  No need to preprint or order from elsewhere!

Follow the steps below to generate and print barcode labels for chemical containers:

1. Download your inventory from ChemTracker. Use information in the “Container ID” column to generate barcodes.

1. Navigate to your chosen barcode generator, for example:   https://free-barcode.com/BarcodeOnline/Code128Online.asp
2. Select Type of Code. Use CODE 128.
3. Set the approximate size of label.
4. Add alphanumeric container IDs (from inventory download)
5. Generate barcodes.
6. If the generator has a print-out feature, then print the labels out for use.  Otherwise, continue to step 7.
7. Copy the generated barcode image (on PC, right click on barcode and select “copy image”).
8. Open a new Word document. 
9. Under the “Mailings” menu, select “Labels”.
10. Under “Options”, select the specific label product to be used.
11. Select “Full Page of the same label” and then select “New Document”.
12. Paste barcode images on this page for printing.
13. Print labels.
14. Apply on containers.  Be sure to apply the correct bar code label/Container ID to the corresponding chemical container from inventory!