Case Printing Systems

conotechi

1

Technical Paper number BT-028

Text Concatenation in a BarTender Database FieldOverview: If you are using Microsoft Excel as the software platform for managing your databases in BarTender, you will find that older versions of the software have a character limit of 255 characters including spaces that can be used in any given cell. Exceeding that limit will cause the BarTender software to substitute symbols as placeholders for those extra characters, which impacts things like lengthy ingredient statements. This tutorial will show you how to work around this issue and have the text present properly.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

NOTE: This tutorial will assume that you have already created a layout, linked it to the database and are looking to correct the problem. It is best to take this into consideration in the initial planning stages to avoid having to disconnect and reconnect the database to pick up the new overflow column.

1. Figure 1 shows the Excel spread sheet with the ingredients cell that includes more than 250 characters. Figure 2 shows how the text field presents the data in the BarTender.

The characters in excess of 255 present as a short series of symbols as seen after Sesame Seeds.

Begin the fix by closing BarTender and opening the Excel file.

Case Printing Systems

conotechi

2

Fig. 4

Fig. 5 Fig. 6

Technical Paper number BT-028

Text Concatenation in a BarTender Database Field

Fig. 3

2. In Excel, add a new column to capture the overflow beyond the 255 character limit. (Fig. 3)The column title should be related to the original column for easy identification. Copy the text beyond the 255 count and paste it into the new column cell and then delete it from the old column. Save the file and close it. Knowing this problem exists in planning a new data base, you can plan for this to happen and create your database accordingly.

3. Open the BarTender layout. Go to File | Database Connection Setup. (Fig. 4) Click Remove, and click Yes and Close to detach the old database from the layout. Go to File | Save to save the changes and open the File | Database Connection Setup again.

4. Click on the Add button to bring up a Wizard. You will reattach the now modified version of the database by following the wizard and clicking Finish when done. (Figs. 5-8)

Case Printing Systems

conotechi

3

Fig. 7

Technical Paper number BT-028

Text Concatenation in a BarTender Database Field

Fig. 8

Fig. 9

Fig. 10

Fig. 11

5. After reattaching the database, click on the problem text field and right click to go into the properties menu. (Fig. 9) Click on the New Data Source icon at the bottom of the left pane. This will bring up a New Data Source Wizard. (Fig. 10)

6. Select Embedded Data from the source drop down menu and click Finish. (Fig. 10) The Properties menu will appear. (Fig. 11) Highlight the Sample Text and hit your space bar. This will clear the text and enter a space. Click the New Data Source icon again and this time select Database Field and click Next. (Fig. 12).

Case Printing Systems

conotechi

4

Technical Paper number BT-028

Text Concatenation in a BarTender Database Field

Fig. 12

Fig. 13

Fig. 16

Fig. 15

Fig. 14

7. Select the new Field Name from the menu to attach it to the text field and click Finish. (Fig. 13) The Properties menu will appear again. Close it.

8. At the bottom of the BarTender screen you will see an icon that looks like a pencil with a red tip. (Fig. 14)

Click it and it will turn into a screen preview of all of the records in the database. (Fig. 15)

Using the arrows, browse to the problem record to see the correct results. (Fig. 16) To undo this browse function and return to the layout mode, click back on the pencil icon.

NOTE: This preview mode will show empty fields as <empty>. It will not print like this. Alternatively, you can preview the records in Print Preview.