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Walkthrough: Creating EAN 8 / EAN 13 Barcodes in Indesign

This walktrough describes how to create EAN 8 and EAN 13 barcodes in Adobe Indesign using the BlitzTools Barcode Software for Indesign. If you don't already have the plug-in installed please download the trial version using the link in the sidebar. The screenshots below show the Barcode Generator for Indesign CS4 under Mac OS X. Handling of the plug-in under Windows and in the CS3 version is identical.

After installing the plug-in into the Indesign Plug-Ins folder the plug-in is accessible via the Indesign tool bar. To create a barcode, select the tool and click-drag a frame on the layer where you want the code.

The barcode settings dialog comes up:

To create EAN 8 make the following selections:

Select EAN 8 from the list of codes
Enter your eight-digit number into the field "data to encode". (If you only have a seven-digit number this is ok, too. The plug-in will automatically generate the check digit for you.)
Select the required size. SC2 is the normal size (100%) resulting in a barode that is approximately 26 mm high and 20 mm wide
If the code comes out too high for your situation (not uncommon with EAN) you can reduce the height without compromising the quality and readability of the code
In most cases EAN is printed with human readable text, so leave this option checked. For EAN we recommend using an OCR B font, as is selected in the dialog

The dialog should look like this:

Click "Ok" and you should see the created EAN 8 barcode in your Indesign document (Tip: If you don't see a code make sure the current layer is a.) visible and b.) unlocked)

Creating an EAN 13 is straight forward. We'll make the following changes in the settings dialog:

Select EAN 13 from the list of codes
Enter your thirteen-digit number into the field "data to encode". (If you only have a twelve-digit number this is ok, too. The plug-in will automatically generate the EAN check digit for you.)

Click "Ok" and you should see the created EAN 13 barcode in your Indesign document. Again, if you don't see a code make sure the current layer is visible and not locked.

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