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Barcode or OCR

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6 replies

by n00bst4r23

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Hi,

My firm typically sends out literally 100,000 mails every week for our legal work. Out of those 100,000, we receive approximately 50,000 to 60,000 mails back from the clients. We have a database for each of these clients and when we get back the letters, we just match up the letter sent by the client to the same client's information on our excel file.

Is there a way where we can create an ID or bar code information for each of the clients? So, when we send out our mails, we would just print the barcode or the ID into the mail for each client, and when we get back the same letter, we can scan that ID or the barcode, and obtain all the stored information about that particular client.

Is there any way to achieve that?

I hope whatever I wrote makes sense.

6 replies

by jamesrl

You may need some software to create unique codes and print them on your envelopes, but it can be done, and generally scanning bar codes with a a hand held scanner will be much more accurate than doing OCR on an address.

Barcodes are just numbers after all.

James

by n00bst4r23

Do you have any suggestions as how to encode information into a barcode? Or any suggested barcode software that you might want to recommend?

Thanks a lot!

by thumbsup2

You can download and install a barcode font. Then, all you do is highlight the text you want to be shown as a barcode and change it to the barcode font.

Barcode fonts are everywhere. A quick search turned up this site. I've downloaded and installed this particular one myself, so I know it works.

http://www.barcodesinc.com/free-barcode-font/

by jamesrl

..using a field you already use as an index - obviously it has to be unique, like a customer number.

As others have mentioned, you can get the fonts for free or cheaply.

James

by larryd4

If you are using MS Word, it has a built in barcode creator for US Mail. When you create an envelope you can add some form code to automatically insert the bar code the US Postal Service uses to sort mail.
You may be able to use that.

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