>Is there a way to print certain fields portrait and also print a bar code landscape on the same report? I understand that the bar code is simply a type of font -- and it will be different for each user. Are there any good third party add ons that would allow this with VFP if it can't be done with the built in report designer?

The subject is printing orientation, but you make mention of barcodes being "simply" in your text and I'd like to caution you that it is not, really, so simple. I too took this popular point of view as fact. I really, really wish people wouldn't say printing barcodes is simple. It can be somewhat simple, but if it's simple, you have to pay more for a control to do it.

It depends a little on what exactly you're doing, but you need to be aware of at least these basic issues:

What barcode format are you going to use?

What font are you going to use?

What is your budget?

Do you need to use an ActiveX control, or can you just transform a UPC, say, stored in a field and print it on labels.

Does the barcode vendor support printing in the size you need?

So, taking a retail application as an example, you might store a UPC field in a table. The UPC will look something like "070687692294" The example is a UPC-A type (11 chars) with one check digit. Printing the barcode is not just a matter of printing "070687692294" with the barcode font. Depending on the font you use, you have to transform "070687692294". Barcodes are encoded

1 - Start glyph
5 - left hand glyphs (a left-hand "7" looks different from a right-hand "7")
1 - center glyph
5 - right hand glyps
1 - stop glyph

If you can afford an active X control, you won't need to deal with the complexity of encoding the UPC. You pass the control your string "070687692294" and out will come the transformation which looks like "aQIQUOI=J:DD:B" in the font I use. When I print the barcode I print this transformation in the barcode font. So, the barcode representation does NOT match the human readable UPC string. And every font vendor uses their own rules.

I could go on, but I'm not sure if any of this really applies to you. I just want to correct the notion that barcode printing is "simply" a special font.