Code 2/5 (Two-of-Five)

Code family 2/5 (read: two-of-five) is made up of eight different code types of which only three are in use nowadays:

Code 2/5 Interleaved, see sample code below
Code 2/5 Industrial (aka: Standard)
Code 2/5 IATA (IATA = "International Air Traffic Association", airline tickets etc.); same code as Industrial but with different start and stop symbols.

Two-of-Five Interleaved is the most popular type. This code type encodes pairs of numbers; the first number is encoded in the bars of a symbol, the second number is encoded in the spaces of a symbol, both numbers are interleaved within a symbol, hence the name. This results in a very compact code.

Code 2/5 is mostly used in warehouse management and transport industry, e.g. German Parcel and DHL who use the code for routing purposes.

Sample barcode created with our barcode plugin for Adobe Illustrator.

Code 2/5 will only encode numerical data, i.e. the digits "0" to "9". Also, Code 2/5 Interleaved will only encode pairs of numbers. With an uneven number of digits, one can either prepend a "0" or add a check digit to get an even number of digits. Our software handles this automatically. To get rid of any preceding "0" most scanners have an option to delete leading zeroes from the encoded data.

Software that creates Code 2/5 Interleaved and Industrial

Barcode Add In for Microsoft Word

Barcode Add In for Microsoft Excel