CheapEasy DIY Barcodes in R

I couldn’t believe how expensive the software was for writing barcodes, so I wrote a short program in R to do it for FREE. And, frankly it should be faster and easier if you already have your labels in an Excel file. You don’t really need to understand the program or even R functions to use it, as long as you know how to run an R program.

Setup and Overview:

[UPDATED (see notes below)] – R-code. Start with this (Note I could not upload a .R file, so this is .txt but still an R program).

Input – barcodes128.csv – You need this file to run the program. Save it in your working directory (see comments in R code for how to set this). AND labels.csv – This is a sample file showing the format for your labels. Even though it’s a .csv, it is a single column with each label as a separate row, so there are no actual commas

Output – BarcodesOut.pdf – A sample output: a pdf file for the 0.5″x1.75″ Worth Poly Label WP0517 (Polyester Label Stock), currently in the lab

That’s really all you need to know, everything that follows is extraneous info. If you have any problems, check out the Detailed Instructions, Troubleshooting Tips, or add a comment below. Continue reading