Creating a barcode in Google Sheets

Flex Input is the easiest way to get your content from where it is to where you need it to be. This guide will walk you through using the Flex Input Google Workspace Add-on to create and insert a barcode into your Google Sheet.

Time Required

Less than 3 minutes.

Background: Barcodes

From Wikipedia:

A barcode or bar code is a method of representing data in a visual, machine-readable form.

Barcodes have many uses: price tags in the grocery store, UPC codes on products for identification, badges and keycards for access control, inventory control for property, just to name a few popular applications. After you've completed this guide you'll be:

• Familiar with the range of barcodes supported by the Flex Input Google Workspace Add-on.
• Inserted 2 different barcodes into a Google Sheet.

Prerequisites

You will need:

• A Google Sheet to create your barcodes: you can create a blank one here.
• The Flex Input Google Workspace Add-on installed.

Once completed, we are ready to go!

Introduction

We're setting up a (small) company inventory system: we want to be able to attach a sticker with a barcode to everything that belongs to the company. The company only has 2 assets (like we said: small): a computer and the associated monitor. Fill out your new spreadsheet with the asset information as shown in the figure below. We've used a scheme where all company monitors have barcodes that start with an M and all company computers have barcodes that start with a C: you can use any values you'd like. One thing to look out for is that there are many different barcode formats, and not all barcode formats support all characters. Depending on how you choose your barcode value you may be limited to certain formats.

For a simple asset tracking system, we'll use the Code 39 barcode format: this is a simple, compact, easy to read barcode format that is great for short barcode values. Flex Input supports many more formats, including the widely used UPC code format (commonly used for prod, the QR code format (commonly used for restaurant menus). To add the barcodes, select the cell D2 and then open the Insert Barcode screen from the Extensions menu as shown below.

In the Insert Barcode screen, copy the barcode value into the Barcode input, then select Code 39 in the Format dropdown: the preview image will update as shown below.

You can then click Save, and the barcode image will be placed in the currently selected cell.

The inserted barcode is an actual image: you can copy it and paste it elsewhere, and it doesn't depend on the extension in the future. If you'd like it a specific size, you can enter a width and height, and the image will be adjusted and saved.

And that's it: you can create as many barcodes as you need using the same method.

Next Steps

Once you have the barcodes generated, you can print them out and stick them on your inventory. You can also use different barcode formats for other purposes.

Thanks once again for using Flex Input.