How can I include the postal barcode on envelopes I print?

Anonymous
2010-08-19T21:58:15+00:00

I've been using word for years.  I occassionally print envelopes including the postal barcode.  I haven't figured it out yet in office 2010.  I hope that some one can help me.  Thanks in advance.

Lee Warren

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2012-01-13T23:40:07+00:00

As explained in  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897290 the POSTNET barcode that Word can create is now obsolete, so it was removed from the Envelope dialog starting in Word 2007.

If you really want to put in a POSTNET barcode, you can go to Insert > Quick Parts > Field and insert a BarCode field (which is how the option in the Envelopes dialog used to do its work). The syntax

of the field code is explained here:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-in/word-help/field-codes-barcode-field-HP005186205.aspx

Jay Freedman

MS Word MVP  FAQ: http://word.mvps.org

Hello everyone!   I too was very frustrated by this.  When I used the "add field" under the quick parts menu in Word 2010 and added "barcode", I would always get "Invalid Zip" as the response.  After some investigating, I found the fix:  if you go to the USPS website at https://ribbs.usps.gov/onecodesolution/download.cfm and download uspsEncoderMsOffice-1.3.0.zip, you can install it in seconds.

Once you install, all you have to do is the following: I went back to the "mailings" menu, selected "envelopes", then went to the address field and clicked "insert", then clicked "quick parts", selected "bar code" and clicked "is US address" and entered the zip code.  This worked perfectly for me in Word 2010. 

Hope this helps!!

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Anonymous
2013-10-30T10:58:10+00:00

The download you want for a 64-bit Windows system running 32-bit Office software is uspsEncoderMsOffice-1.3.1.  Looks similar except the MsOffice part.

The solution referenced requires more operator intervention than I would like each time one wishes to insert a bar code on an envelope.  Hopefully, that will be a fix in the future.

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Jay Freedman 208.3K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2010-08-20T01:37:37+00:00

As explained in  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897290 the POSTNET barcode that Word can create is now obsolete, so it was removed from the Envelope dialog starting in Word 2007.

If you really want to put in a POSTNET barcode, you can go to Insert > Quick Parts > Field and insert a BarCode field (which is how the option in the Envelopes dialog used to do its work). The syntax

of the field code is explained here:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-in/word-help/field-codes-barcode-field-HP005186205.aspx

Jay Freedman

MS Word MVP  FAQ: http://word.mvps.org

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-12-21T04:33:28+00:00

    Sorry Suzanne but you are wrong, as I stated with the Ariel font the lowercase L and upper case I use the exact same character except for the height and as height is also determined by font pitch, for OCR to work it would have to assume there's no font size changes within the address - a dangerous assumption because you have humans generating the address and as any programmer knows it is poor programming practice to make assumptions on input from humans.  Someone might be typing an address from some old antique typewriter they discovered in a bin at Goodwill where the letters aren't lined up nicely due to the thing being worn out. :-)

    Ariel is an incredibly poor font for anything other than text in a novel where the human brain can determine from the context of the letters surrounding the character whether the character is an L or an I.  In an address particularly a street name the computer at UPS would have to make a guess when encountering that character in Ariel.

    I think too many people like the Ariel font because of that silly Disney movie about the mermaid.  Maybe Microsoft should have named the Ariel font the Ugly font, and named Tahoma the Ice Cream font. <eyeroll>

    While it may indeed be true that the computers at UPS can sort out the various parts of an address nowadays if the address isn't in the correct format, the Zip code address checking website from UPS takes great pains when showing output to format it as I described in my post.  I'm going to trust the output from the official USPS website and the official USPS documents before I trust an assumption that just because the POSTNET section of the document is invalid the whole document is likely invalid, and start experimenting with address formatting that differs from USPS's own output.

    As for handwriting, that is a dying art, did you know they no longer teach Cursive in many elementary schools?  From my POV it can't come quickly enough even when I was a young pup in school I couldn't write more than a paragraph without my hand cramping.  I always typed my papers even when the teacher didn't require it!

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