|
Free Lessons Courses Seminars |
TechHelp Fast Tips Templates |
Topic Index Forum ABCD |
|
||||||
|
|
QR Codes By Richard Rost 
5 years ago
Display QR Codes in your Microsoft Access Forms In this video, I will show you how to use the Google Charts API and the WebBrowser Control to display QR Codes (2D barcodes) in your Microsoft Access Forms. QR Codes are great for detailed product info, employee name badges, whole web page URLs, or any time you want to display an image for someone to scan with their phone to get detailed information. Anna from Madison, Wisconsin (a Platinum Member) inquires: I watched your previous videos on scanning and printing barcodes. They've been very helpful for my business. Thanks! I would love to be able to print employee ID badges with QR codes on them containing their Employee ID number, first and last names, and some other information. Is this possible with Microsoft Access? Updates
MembersMembers will learn how to download the QR code from the web and save it as a local file on their hard drive, in a folder under their current database folder. Then, you will see how to display that file as an image in a report so we can print employee name badges.
Silver Members and up get access to view Extended Cut videos, when available. Gold Members can download the files from class plus get access to the Code Vault. If you're not a member, Join Today!
Barcode Lessons
Google Charts
Other Free Online Barcode GeneratorsLinks
IntroIn this video, I will show you how to display QR codes in your Microsoft Access forms by using the Google Charts API and the web browser control. You will learn how QR codes can store more information than standard barcodes, understand the limitations of built-in and third-party QR code solutions for Access, and see a step-by-step walkthrough for generating and displaying QR codes based on your database data, such as employee information or customer records, right inside your forms.TranscriptWelcome to another TechHelp video brought to you by AccessLearningZone.com. I am your instructor, Richard Rost.In today's video, I am going to show you how to display QR codes in your Microsoft Access forms. Ever since I released my first barcode video a couple of days ago, I have gotten tons of emails and comments from people asking if it is possible to do QR codes with Microsoft Access. Of course, I got one from a platinum member, so it is time for a video. Anna from Madison, Wisconsin writes, I watched your previous videos on scanning and printing barcodes. They have been very helpful for my business. Thank you very much. You are welcome very much. I would love to be able to print employee badges with QR codes on them containing their employee ID, first and last names, and some other information. Is this possible in Microsoft Access? Well, Anna, as we talked about in the last two videos, typical barcodes are 1D barcodes and they look like that. They are good for things like inventory and products, but you really cannot put too much information on them. That code right there has got what, 5, 6, 7, 8 characters. It is also relatively big. QR codes are a type of 2D code that can contain a lot more information. Like you said, an employee's ID, first name, last name, maybe their access level, whatever. You can put a bunch of information in a QR code. The problems with QR codes and Microsoft Access specifically - first, there is no simple font you can install. Doing code 39 was really easy. All we had to do was insert a barcode font, install it in Windows, and then put asterisks around whatever number we wanted to use and boom, there is your barcode. You cannot do that with a QR code or pretty much any other 2D code. Now, there is a QR code add-in that you can use for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. You just go up into Insert and then Add-ins, Get Add-ins, and then they have got a couple QR code ones in there. There is no such add-in for Access. Why does Access always get treated like the redhead of the stepchild? I do not know. They do not always give the same love to Access as the other apps get, probably because about 1 percent of the people use Access compared to Excel and Word. There is no Microsoft add-in for it. Some of the third-party add-ins that I have seen that are in the Microsoft store also, you cannot put those in Access. In my research, I did find a couple of third-party Access add-ins that you can get. You can install either an add-in to Access or you can install tons of source code you can implement. They cost at least $100. There is one for $299, and if you want to invest that much money into it, great, that is fine. I have not tried any of those solutions, so I do not know how good or bad they work, but they are selling them, so they must work. Yes, you could write code to do QR codes yourself, but I would not even want to attempt that, to be honest. I mean, I am sure I could, but no, there are already solutions available. I would not want to invest the time into developing - why reinvent the wheel? What is my solution? I have come up with a free solution that you can use with Access to display QR codes in your forms, and it is going to use the Google Charts API. Basically, we will install a web browser control in our form and then tell the web browser control to go to Google Charts and generate a QR code. Let me show you how the web browser control works. I have got a whole separate lesson on the web browser control. I will put a link in the link section down below. Go watch that if you have never used the web browser control before, but it is real simple. I will show you how to use it. Then, once we do that, I will show you Google Charts and how to use their API. Then, we will put the two of them together. Actually, I lied. Let us take a look at the Google Chart API first. Here is my website. Go to itsdevelopers.google.com/chart to find more information on Google Charts. This is basically an API that lets you display charts live in any website that you want to. If you want to include bar charts, pie charts, or QR codes in your website, you can. You can also use them to pull information down from the web. For example, here is their chart API. There is a QR code. Here is the URL for it right there. I will put a copy of this URL down below in the notes for you. It is chart.googleapis.com/chart. Then, question mark, and here are your parameters. CHL is the chart label. This QR code, if I scan it right now with my phone, it would come up with 599CD.com. I could very easily put Richard Rost in there. The web browser will convert a space into that percent 20. That is normal. This QR code says Richard Rost. You can put whatever you want in here for the chart label within reason. Then, you have got the chart size, which is 200 by 200. That is the size in pixels that you want. You can set that to whatever you want to. Then, CHT is the chart type. It is QR code. You can do bar charts, line charts, all kinds of crazy stuff. This is all well documented on Google's website. Under QR codes, there are all kinds of different parameters and things you can do. I am not going to go over all of this today. I might do a full lesson on QR codes at some point in the future. Today, we are just going to show you how to get this and display it in your Access database using the web browser control. All we need to do is take this, modify that guy, and have the web browser go there. Seems easy enough. Let us see how the web browser control works. Here I am inside my TechHelp free template. This is the free download from my website. If you want to go grab yourself a copy, if not, no big deal. In my customer form, let us say I want to put a nice QR code right here. We can use the web browser control for that. Let us see how the web browser control works. Go to Design View. Now, for the purposes of class, we do not need any of this stuff here. Let us just delete all that stuff. We are going to put a QR code right there. Go up to your design. In the control box, find this guy. It is the web browser control. They added a new version of this. I want to say Access 2016. It was added in 2016 or 2013. They added a new version of the web browser control. There is an older web browser control that is still in here. You have to go into the ActiveX control to find it. This new guy works a whole lot better than the old guy. I have got lessons in my old Access 2013 class that show how to use the old version. This new version is easy. Basically, existing web page or you can use the hyperlink builder if you want to, whichever you prefer. Type in an address. HTTPS://599c.com. That is what it looks like there. That is important to remember. That is the control source. It has to be equals and then the URL in quotes. That is important. See, equals that. You cannot just put HTTPS://599c.com in the control source. You have to put it equals and then inside quotes. Very important to remember that. We are going to call this web B. That is my web B control. I do not like web browser 36 or whatever they had. Close that. Close that. Open up the customer form and boom. In a second it loads up my web page. I do not want to see my web page. I want this to go out to Google API with that URL that I showed you a second ago and generate a QR code based on, let us say, the customer's ID, first name, and last name. Let us open up the properties here. We are going to change this URL. What do we want to make it? Let us grab that code we had before. Come back here. I copied it to my clipboard. I paste that in. That is the full URL that I had before with Google Charts. Let me zoom in so you can see this a little bit better. I am going to hit Shift-F2. Zoom in. There we go. Now, instead of 599c.com, let us just do first name and last name. Close that. Ampersand, first name, and a space and last name. Just like that. This is called string concatenation. If you have never done string concatenation before, go watch my concatenation video. I will put a link below in the link section. All right. Hit OK. Then we are going to save this and then open it back up again and look at my QR code. Look at that. That is neat. We are going to want to resize this, obviously, so it fits. There is going to be a little bit of a border around it. You can change border settings and all kinds of stuff later to make it look cool. You can make the QR code bigger or smaller based on those settings in there - it is 200x200 right now. Get it looking however you want it to look. There you go. You can turn scroll bars off. There are all kinds of settings in here. Let us see. Under Format, scroll bars visible: No. You could change the margins or padding, just go zero. Save that. Let us see what it looks like. Oh yeah, it is a little bit better. You can get it exactly in there. I am not going to take the time now. But watch. When I go from record to record, there is a different code. There is a different code. And you can use pretty much whatever data you want in here inside that QR code. Want to throw their ID in there? That is not a big deal. Design view. Come in here. Edit this guy. Go to data. Put it right here, maybe. ID and space. Now it is going to be a slightly different QR code. You can throw their address in there, whatever you want. There you go. Yes, I just tested it with my QR code scanner that I have on my phone. I think I mentioned it in the first video on barcode scanning, which one I use. And it works. So there you go, people. That is how you do QR codes in Microsoft Access. Now, there are a couple of drawbacks with doing it this way. Problem number one is this will make a call out to Google API every time you open up that customer record. So you have to have web access. If you are doing thousands of lookups every day, right now Google says on their website that there is no limit. But if they see you using it really heavily, like if you have a network with a whole ton of people on it and you are looking up records left and right, you might want to put it on a separate form. Not your main customer form like I did. Say, go get this customer's QR code and it will show up there if it is requested. Second problem is it will not work offline. You cannot use this method in reports. You cannot put the web browser control into reports. You cannot even print preview a form. So this is pretty much an on-screen solution. If you want a QR code, that is how you can get it and you will display it in the Access form. I do have a solution though, a way that you can print the QR code out in a name badge. What is my solution? Well, the solution is to have Access download that QR code to a local folder. The URL returns a PNG, a portable network graphic, an image file. It is like a JPEG or a GIF, just a different format. So what we do is we tell the web browser, grab that image and save it locally on the hard drive. This will reduce calls to Google because then in the future, we just check to see if that QR code exists. We do not have to keep looking it up every single time. It will work offline, so if your internet is down, for example, you can still generate or print out the QR codes that you have. If you have it saved as an image locally, it can be printed in reports, which is the important part because then you can make the name badges and stuff that you want to make. I will cover how to do all of this in the extended cut for members. Want to learn more about QR codes? In the extended cut, I am going to show you how you can download that QR code right from Google's website and save it as a file on your local drive. Once it is saved as a file, you can then display that instead of having to go out to the web every time to get it and generate it. Plus, once it is saved as a local file, we can treat it as an image and then we can put that image in our reports so we can print out things like name badges. That is all covered in the extended cut for members. Silver members and up get access to all of my extended cut videos. How do you become a member? Click the join button below the video. After you click the join button, you will see a list of all the different types of membership levels that are available. Silver members and up will get access to all of the extended cut TechHelp videos, live video and chat sessions, and more. Gold members get access to a download folder containing all the sample databases that I build in my TechHelp videos, plus my code vault where I keep tons of different functions that I use. Platinum members get all the previous perks plus access to my full beginner courses and some of my expert courses. These are the full-length courses found on my website and not just for Access. I also teach Word, Excel, Visual Basic, ASP, and lots more. Do not worry, these free TechHelp videos are going to keep coming. As long as you keep watching them, I will keep making more. If you liked this video, please give me a thumbs up and feel free to post any comments that you have. I do read them all. Make sure you subscribe to my channel, which is completely free, and click the bell icon and select all to receive notifications when new videos are posted. Click on the Show More link below the video to find additional resources and links. You will see a list of other videos, additional information related to the current topic, free lessons, and lots more. YouTube no longer sends out email notifications when new videos are posted, so if you would like to get an email every time I post a new video, click on the link to join my mailing list. If you have not yet tried my free Access Level 1 course, check it out now. It covers all the basics of building databases with Access. It is over three hours long. You can find it on my website or on my YouTube channel. If you like Level 1, Level 2 is just one dollar, and it is also free for all members of my YouTube channel at any level. Want to have your question answered in a video just like this one? Visit my TechHelp page and you can send me your question there. Click here to watch my free Access Beginner Level 1 course, more of my TechHelp videos, or to subscribe to my channel. Thanks for watching this video from AccessLearningZone.com. QuizQ1. What is the main challenge with displaying QR codes in Microsoft Access compared to 1D barcodes?A. There is no simple font you can install to create QR codes B. QR codes do not work with any barcode scanner C. QR codes cannot be displayed using any software D. QR codes require special paper to print Q2. Which solution does the video present for displaying QR codes in Access forms? A. Using an expensive third-party add-in B. Installing a barcode font and applying it to a text box C. Using the Google Charts API with a web browser control D. Developing custom code to generate QR code images Q3. What is required for the Google Charts QR code solution to work in Access forms? A. Installing a custom font in Windows B. Adding the web browser control to an Access form C. Using an image control to upload graphics D. Accessing the solution offline without an internet connection Q4. What is the purpose of the 'CHL' parameter in the Google Charts API URL for QR codes? A. It specifies the chart type B. It sets the size of the QR code C. It provides the data to encode in the QR code D. It determines the color of the QR code Q5. When setting the control source for the web browser control in Access to generate a QR code, what is important to remember? A. You must use single quotes around the URL B. The URL must be concatenated using string concatenation C. You need to start with '=' and put the URL inside double quotes D. It must be set only in properties, not with any expressions Q6. What data can you include inside the QR code using this method? A. Only the customer ID B. Fixed text only, not fields from records C. Any combination of fields such as ID, first and last name, and address D. Only numeric data Q7. What is a major drawback of using the Google Chart API with Access forms for QR codes? A. QR codes can only be printed, not displayed on screen B. It uses local resources instead of the internet C. It requires a call to Google API every time a record is displayed and does not work offline D. The solution is unavailable to non-members Q8. Why can't this web browser QR code solution be used directly in Access reports? A. Reports do not support web browser controls B. Reports can only display images, not QR codes C. Reports can only use third-party add-ins D. Reports require internet connection to function Q9. How does the extended (member-only) solution improve upon the basic QR code method shown? A. By allowing you to design custom QR codes manually B. By enabling export of QR codes to PDF C. By downloading and saving the QR code image as a local file and displaying it in reports D. By printing barcodes instead of QR codes Q10. What happens if the internet connection is unavailable and you are using only the web browser control method? A. QR codes will display as usual B. QR codes will not load or display C. QR codes will display outdated information D. QR codes will be converted to barcodes Q11. What is string concatenation used for in this tutorial? A. Combining chart types for more complex QR codes B. Merging different data fields (like ID, first name, last name) into one string for the QR code data C. Changing the color of the QR code D. Saving QR codes directly to the clipboard Q12. What type of file does the Google Chart QR code API return when requested? A. DOCX (Word document) B. PNG (Portable Network Graphic) C. MP3 (audio file) D. TXT (plain text file) Q13. Which Access control is used to embed and display QR codes using the tutorial's method? A. Image control B. Label control C. Web browser control D. Form control Q14. What does the instructor recommend if you want to print QR codes in name badges via Access reports? A. Use the web browser control directly in reports B. Download the QR code image as a file and use it in the report C. Use a barcode font instead D. Hire a third-party developer Q15. What did the instructor mention as a possible issue if you use the Google Chart API excessively (for thousands of lookups daily)? A. Google may print incorrect QR codes B. Google may impose usage restrictions or limits C. Access will crash D. The QR codes will expire after some time Answers: 1-A; 2-C; 3-B; 4-C; 5-C; 6-C; 7-C; 8-A; 9-C; 10-B; 11-B; 12-B; 13-C; 14-B; 15-B DISCLAIMER: Quiz questions are AI generated. If you find any that are wrong, don't make sense, or aren't related to the video topic at hand, then please post a comment and let me know. Thanks. SummaryToday's video from Access Learning Zone focuses on how to display QR codes within Microsoft Access forms. Since I released my first barcode video recently, I have received many requests about the possibility of creating QR codes in Access. This includes a question from Anna, who is looking to print employee badges with QR codes containing various pieces of employee information such as ID, name, and more.To begin, it's important to distinguish between 1D barcodes, which are the standard barcodes you might see on products or for inventory tracking, and QR codes, which are a form of 2D barcode. The limitation of 1D barcodes is that they can only store a small amount of data, maybe just a handful of characters. In contrast, QR codes can hold much more information, making them ideal when you want to encode details like employee ID, names, or access levels. With Access, working with 1D barcodes like Code 39 is straightforward. You simply install a barcode font, use asterisks around your text, and the font takes care of the rest. Unfortunately, displaying QR codes is not nearly as simple. There isn't a readily available QR code font or straightforward Microsoft add-in for Access. While Word, Excel, and PowerPoint have QR code add-ins you can access through their Get Add-ins menu, Access does not receive the same treatment. Few third-party solutions exist, but most are quite expensive, often around $100 or more, and I haven't tested any of them personally for reliability. Writing your own code from scratch to generate QR codes in Access is technically possible, but it's not a simple task. Rather than reinventing the wheel, I have opted for a solution that is both easy and free by using the Google Charts API. In this approach, we utilize the web browser control available in Access forms to display a QR code generated on the fly using Google's services. Before integrating this with Access, it helps to understand how the Google Charts API works. The API allows you to display various kinds of charts, including pie charts, bar charts, and QR codes, simply by constructing a specially formatted URL. For QR codes, you use the chart.googleapis.com service and provide parameters such as the label (the information you want to embed), the size of the code, and the chart type. For example, you can have a link that produces a QR code for a website or a person's name. The API will automatically format spaces and other special characters in the string. Inside Access, you can use the web browser control to display a website or any image. By setting the control's source to the appropriate Google Charts URL, you display the generated QR code directly on your form. The new web browser control, added in Access 2016 (and improved in subsequent versions), works much better than the older ActiveX-based one. It's important to set the control source property correctly, using equals and double quotes around the URL. To tie the QR code to specific customer data, such as the customer's first name, last name, or ID, you use string concatenation. By constructing the Google URL dynamically, you can generate a unique QR code for each record. As you move through your forms, each record's information will be encoded into a separate QR code. You can include any field you want, such as IDs, addresses, or even multiple fields. You have some formatting options as well, including adjusting scroll bars, borders, margins, and the size of the QR code itself. These settings are tweakable so the QR code fits neatly in your form. It's worth noting some limitations with this method. First, the control requires internet access because it must fetch the image from the Google API every time the record is displayed. While Google doesn't currently enforce strict limits on these requests, making a high volume of calls could become a problem, especially across a large network. Also, the method doesn't work offline, nor can it be used to print QR codes in Access reports because you cannot embed web browser controls in reports. If you need to print these QR codes on name badges or forms, a better method is to have Access download the QR code image from Google Charts and save it locally. The resulting PNG file can then be stored and used as an ordinary image in Access, which allows you to print it, reduces the number of calls to Google's service, and enables offline use. Storing the image locally also means you can include the QR code in reports, which is crucial for tasks like badge printing. For those who are interested in a step-by-step guide to downloading the QR code image and integrating it into a report or badge, I cover this process in the Extended Cut for members. In that lesson, I show how to automate the process of saving the QR code as a file and using it in your Access reports. If you want to explore more about QR codes or Access, Silver members and above can watch all Extended Cut videos, join live video and chat sessions, and enjoy additional perks. Gold members receive access to all the sample databases and code vaults I use, while Platinum members can take advantage of my complete beginner and expert course video libraries, which include courses on topics besides Access, such as Excel, Word, and ASP. These free TechHelp videos will continue as long as you keep watching and submitting questions. If you found this helpful, consider liking the video, leaving a comment, and subscribing to my channel to stay notified of new tutorials. You'll find links to additional resources and related topics in the Show More section below the video. YouTube no longer sends out email notifications by default, so if you would like an email each time I release a new video, be sure to join my mailing list. And if you haven't taken my free Access Level 1 course yet, it covers all the database basics and is available both on my website and YouTube channel. Level 2 is just a dollar or free for all channel members. If you have a question you'd like answered, visit my TechHelp page to submit it. You can find a complete video tutorial with step-by-step instructions on everything discussed here on my website at the link below. Live long and prosper, my friends. Topic ListDifference between 1D barcodes and 2D QR codesLimitations of barcodes in Microsoft Access Overview of QR code capabilities Explanation of why QR code fonts do not work Discussion of Microsoft Office QR code add-ins Overview of third-party QR code solutions for Access Introduction to using Google Charts API for QR codes Locating Google Charts QR code API documentation Understanding Google Charts API QR code parameters Generating a custom QR code URL Adding the web browser control to Access forms Setting up the control source for the web browser control Displaying a QR code using web browser control Customizing the QR code content with form data Using string concatenation to build URLs in Access Adjusting the size and appearance of the QR code Disabling scroll bars and adjusting margins in forms Dynamically displaying QR codes per record in forms Limitations of web browser control for offline and reports |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||
| Keywords: TechHelp Access qr codes, 2d barcode, WebBrowser, URLDownloadToFile, printing qr codes, qr codes labels, free qr codes in access PermaLink QR Codes in Microsoft Access |
