Hello Bianca,

Simple answer: many types of handheld scanners simply plug in to the keyboard port on a PC, providing a pig-tail cable to allow the keyboard to remain attached. The scanner is usually able to be programmed to do such things as auto-keystroke (like hitting the Enter key) which moves the cursor to the next field after a scan. Assuming that you are just capturing a string from a barcoded source, it's just like doing manual entry as far as programming is concerned....except the data gets entered much faster and more accurately.

I have found it to be very easy to incorporate scanners into VFP programs. Deciphering the documentation that comes with "cheap" scanners is the hardest part of the journey.

David