Report Gen Toolkit MERGEBARCODE issue

[pallen]

Hello, 

I'm using the Report Generation Toolkit to create a printed label.  

The toolkit is pulling data from an Excel worksheet and populating bookmark fields on a Word Template file.  

Recently added a QR code to the label.  

Following instructions from Microsoft here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/field-codes-mergebarcode-812fc43f-cb53-4782-8f9f-290ed08d...

Label is being created with the "curly brackets" and the MERGEBARCODE command still visible in the data field.

Instructions indicate that Ctrl+F9 must be used, and that typing the curly brackets will not work. 

Is there a way to "toggle" the MS Word field codes in LabVIEW? 

So far I have not found a way to do this.    

[billko]

Interesting.  My generation called {} "braces".  Of course, we called # "pound sign" and we didn't even have a term for @.  😉

[BertMcMahan]

I don't have a way to do it directly, but I've had problems where the RGT would be a big pain, but a Word/Excel macro would be super simple.

In those instances, I just load the data into Word/Excel from LabVIEW, then call a macro from within LabVIEW. It's not as flexible of course, but it's a massive pain to do much advanced plotting or formatting from the RGT. Maybe you can trigger a macro to do it if you can't find a LabVIEW-native way.

[pallen]

I think I may have found a way to do it.  

Unfortunately I don't have the required version of MS Word installed on this PC.  Waiting to hear the results of testing. 

 

Here's the MS documentation for MergeBarcode:  

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/field-codes-mergebarcode-812fc43f-cb53-4782-8f9f-290ed08d...

I concatenated the brackets, command, and switches with my data.  But the "field code" ended up in the field, not the barcode.  

Found a post here:  

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/How-to-update-fields-in-word/td-p/3207348

And then I found more MS documentation here: 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/word.fields.toggleshowcodes

[ben64 · Accepted solution]

The MergeBarcode method doesn't work and is poorly documented. Use the DisplayBarcode method instead. Here is an example using DisplayBarcode (Field type 99, MergeBarcode is 98).

Ben64

[pallen]

Hi Ben, 

Thanks for your reply.  

Yesterday the client scripted a macro in the Word template file, and we are having LabVIEW call that macro to show the Field Codes. 

Private Sub Show_QRCode()

    ActiveDocument.ActiveWindow.View.ShowFieldCodes = False

End Sub

If that does not work, I'll have something else to try now.  Thanks!

[pallen]

Thanks Ben, 

I ended up using DisplayBarcode (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/field-codes-displaybarcode-6d81eade-762d-4b44-ae81-f9d3d9...) 

Concatenated the command and switches with my data and popped it into a Bookmark on the report template.  Then I call the macro in the template to toggle the field code.