Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Dynamics NAV - Send Raw ZPL to a barcode printer to print a barcode from a report


Under normal circumstances, you can just send a text file containing ZPL commands to a zebra barcode printer, and it will interpret the commands, and print the barcode.

However, NAV 's 2013 report format forces the commands to be displayed in a table, which prevents the printer from parsing the ZPL contained within the table, resulting in the printer printing the actual commands instead of interpreting them.

To get around this,
  • Right click on printer
  • Properties>Advanced>Miscellaneous>Enable Passthrough Mode
The default passthrough notation is ${ and }$
Any text placed within that notation will be parsed as ZPL commands.

You can now format your text strings in the report to begin and end with the passthrough notation, and the barcode printer will interpret them correctly.

Original Post

2 comments:

  1. Hi There

    This looks good, beats writing it to a text file and copying the file to a shared printer or streaming direct to the IP address as suggested in other posts on the web.

    We will use this method to print drum and pallet labels.

    We are thinking of printing the whole label using ZPL commands as they give exact control and the label needs to print vertically.

    So I assume if all the text in the report is ZPL commands and it all sits within the {$ and $} characters we will have total control of the printer?

    In the NAV 2013 report layout do we print one ZPL command per line? Or can we put multiple commands on one line?

    Does the page size of the label need to be defined in the NAV report layout? Or if we set that size in the first ZPL commands will the default A4 page size be ignored?

    Thanks
    Richard

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