Guide
Printing barcodes in bulk: label sheets, barcode types and bars that scan
A stockroom with a few hundred products needs a few hundred labels, and making them one at a time in a barcode tool is slow. What you want is a list in, a sheet out: type or paste the values, choose the sticker sheet you have bought, and download a PDF in which every label is in the right place. This page does that, with a check of each value, a choice of six barcode types and the layout of common A4 and US Letter sheets.
Entering the list
One barcode per line: the value, then an optional caption and an optional number of copies, separated by pipes. For example, MUG-BLU-001 | Blue mug | 6 prints six labels of that code with the caption above it. A line with only a value prints one label. The number of copies can be from 1 to 500, and a run can have up to 2,000 labels. Toggles decide whether the value is printed under the bars and the caption above.
Which type
Code 128 takes any text and is the usual choice for stock codes and order numbers. EAN-13 and UPC-A are for retail products with official numbers, EAN-8 for small packs, Code 39 for simple internal codes in capitals and ITF-14 for outer cartons. The page names the rules for the selected type under the selector. If a value does not fit, the message names the value and the type, and nothing is printed until it is fixed.
Check digits
Retail barcodes end in a check digit calculated from the digits before it, which lets a scanner reject a misread. If you give EAN-13 twelve digits, the page works out the thirteenth for you: 590123412345 becomes 5901234123457. If you give all thirteen and the last one is wrong, the value is rejected rather than printed, because a barcode with a bad check digit will not scan in a shop.
The sheet
Choose a preset or enter your own measurements: labels across and down, their size, the margins and the gaps. The page checks that the grid fits the paper. A small preview shows the sheet, with used labels shaded grey and the ones to be printed in colour. If a sheet is partly used, enter how many labels to skip, and the first labels of the first page are left empty. A shift in millimetres compensates for a printer that is slightly off.
A worked example
Press Sample for four stock codes: 6 labels of MUG-BLU-001, 6 of MUG-RED-001, 4 of TEA-GRN-050 and 3 of TOWEL-KIT-02, a total of 19. On the default A4 sheet of 21 labels, 63.5 × 38.1 mm in three columns and seven rows, they fit on one page, and the page says “19 labels will use 1 sheet”. Each Code 128 barcode has 156 modules plus the quiet zones, so on a 59.5 mm usable width the bars are about 0.34 mm wide, comfortably above the 0.25 mm the page treats as the minimum. If you set “skip” to 5, the 19 labels need positions 6 to 24, so the run takes two sheets.
Making them scan
Print at actual size on a sticker sheet or plain paper, in black on white, and do not shrink the file. Keep the quiet zone clear: the page leaves it, so do not put the label right against a coloured edge. Scan one printed label with the scanner or phone app you will use before you print a whole run. If the page warns that the bars would be too thin, use a larger label, a shorter value or Code 128.
Edge cases
An empty list is rejected. A line with an invalid value is named by its text. Code 39 accepts lower-case letters by converting them to capitals. Duplicate values are allowed, because you may want many copies. The text you type and your sheet choice are remembered in this browser, and a plain outline can be drawn round each label for printing on plain paper.
Limits
The sheet presets follow the sizes of well-known label stock, but manufacturers differ by a millimetre or two, so measure your own and use the custom grid if prints drift. The page draws bars from the encoding of each type and does not run a scanner test. It does not register numbers, so use official numbers for retail products.
Related tools
- Barcode Generator makes a single barcode as an image.
- Bulk QR Code Sticker Sheet PDF Maker does the same for two-dimensional codes.
- Product SKU Generator creates the stock codes you print here.
- EAN-13 and UPC Check Digit Calculator checks a retail number by itself.
Checked against the current version of the Bulk Barcode Sheet Generator on .