The first line is moved over to the left by one space when using the IDAutomation DataMatrix Font in Word mail merge, and when connecting to an Excel spreadsheet using IDAutomation’s Microsoft Office Macro. After the first line, the barcode becomes indented by one space making it unreadable by a scanner.

Solution(s):

The latest version of the IDAutomation DataMatrix Font solves this issue completely. Download the current version of any IDAutomation product with an active Priority Support & Upgrade Subscription.

This issue is a result of the integration of mail merge between MS Word and Excel. The Microsoft Office Macro inserts a space before every line to create a quiet zone around the barcode. MS Word, by design, will remove the leading spaces of every record in the spreadsheet thus moving the first line over.

To get around this, the Substitute Function in Excel needs to be used in the spreadsheet to remove the spaces and replace them with a null value.

For example: