Barcode Image Saver

# Barcode Image Saver — Full Description

Barcode Image Saver turns a spreadsheet column into a folder full of barcode

images. Point it at an Excel or CSV file, choose the column that holds your

codes, pick a barcode type, and it writes one image per row — whether that's

10 rows for a test batch or 10,000 for a full product catalog.

Built for real spreadsheets, not clean ones

Most barcode tools assume your data is perfect. In practice, spreadsheets

exported from inventory systems, POS software, or a supplier's price list

rarely are. Barcode Image Saver was built around that reality:

• Product codes are read as text, not numbers — so a code like

0012345678905 keeps its leading zeros instead of becoming 12345678905,

and long UPCs don't get mangled into scientific notation like 1.2E+11,

a common failure point in tools built on Excel libraries designed for

numeric data.

• File encoding and delimiter are detected automatically — UTF-8,

UTF-8 with BOM, UTF-16, UTF-32, Windows-1252, and Latin-1 are all handled,

along with comma, semicolon, tab, and pipe-delimited CSVs. A CSV exported

from an older POS system on a non-English Windows install often isn't

plain UTF-8, and silently misreading it produces barcodes for the wrong

values.

• Ragged rows are padded, blank rows and columns dropped, and duplicate or

missing headers handled automatically — a messy export doesn't need

manual cleanup first.

• Supports .xlsx, .xlsm, .xls (via the optional xlrd package), and

.csv, up to 1,000,000 rows.

• The barcode column is pre-selected automatically by looking for header

names like barcode, code, sku, upc, ean, or product code.

Eight barcode types, standard-correct

Each symbology enforces the actual encoding rules for that standard, not

just bars that look plausible:

EAN-13, EAN-8, UPC-A, and ISBN calculate the check digit for you. If a value

already includes a check digit, the app recalculates it rather than

trusting what's in the spreadsheet — a deliberate choice worth knowing

about before a large print run, since a typo in the last digit gets

silently corrected rather than flagged. Values the selected symbology can't

encode are logged with a specific reason, for example *"EAN must have 12

digits, received 9"*, rather than failing silently.

Image output and label layout

• PNG (raster) and SVG (vector) output
• Width, height, and DPI are all configurable, with DPI written into PNG

metadata for correct print sizing

• Adjustable margin (quiet zone), and text/label size that scales with

image height, so proportions stay consistent from a 150px preview to a

2400px print file

• Transparent background for PNG; SVG output keeps a white backdrop, since

its handling of background color differs from raster formats

• Bars and every line of text sit in separate horizontal bands — text

is capped at 55% of the image height and shrunk to fit rather than

truncated, so a barcode number never gets cut off with an ellipsis

Label templates: Barcode Only, Barcode + Human Readable Text, Barcode +

Product Name, or Barcode + Custom Excel Column, with caption position set

to Above or Below the bars. If the chosen text column just repeats the

barcode value, the caption is skipped automatically rather than printing

the same number twice.

File naming that survives a real batch job

Four naming modes — Barcode Value, Row Number, Barcode Value + Row Number,

or a Custom Excel Column — combined with prefix/suffix, five separator

options, and auto-numbering (custom start value, step, and padding from

1 to 00001). For more control, a token-based custom pattern is

available:

```

{Prefix}{Sep}{Barcode}{Sep}{AutoNumber}{Sep}{Suffix}

```

Every column in your source file is available as its own token (e.g.

{product_name}). Safety handling includes:

• Windows-forbidden characters (\ / : * ? " < > |) replaced automatically
• Full Unicode support, including non-Latin filenames —

বাংলা_001.png, 商品001.png, Продукт001.png

• Reserved device names (CON, PRN, LPT1, etc.) handled
• Duplicate names get _1, _2, _3 appended rather than overwriting —

checked against files already in the output folder from a previous run,

not just names generated in the current batch

Live preview, not a guess

The preview panel shows the exact image and exact file name you'll get,

updating as you type on a background thread so typing never stutters. If

the current data can't be encoded by the selected barcode type, it falls

back to a valid sample and explains why, instead of showing an empty box.

A Copy button puts the preview image directly on the clipboard.

Tested at scale, not just demoed

On a 10,000-row workbook generating 500×200px images at 200 DPI:

These figures come from an actual benchmark run. Memory stays flat because

images are written to disk as they're generated rather than held in

memory, which is what lets the same app handle 100 rows or 100,000 without

slowing down partway through. All rendering and file writing happens on

background threads, so the window never freezes — the progress bar shows

percentage, current file name, elapsed time, and estimated time remaining,

throttled to about 12 updates per second regardless of batch size.

Validation and reports

After a run, you get counts of images generated, rows skipped for being

blank, rows skipped as duplicates, and rows that failed validation. A

failed row never consumes an auto-number, so the output sequence stays

gapless. Two optional files are written to the output folder:

Interface

A three-column layout keeps every setting visible on one screen at

1366×768 with no scrolling, even with auto-numbering and a custom filename

pattern both open. Light, Dark, and System themes are supported, with a

Windows 11 visual style (rounded cards, blue accent, numbered steps).

Keyboard shortcuts cover the core workflow — Ctrl+O to open a

spreadsheet, Ctrl+G to generate, Esc to cancel a running batch, Ctrl+Q

to exit. Spreadsheets can be dropped directly onto the window, or opened

via right-click → Open With in File Explorer.

Convenience

All 34 settings are saved automatically to

%APPDATA%\BarcodeImageSaver\settings.json using atomic writes, so a crash

can't corrupt the settings file. The last opened folder and output folder

are remembered, and Generate another batch resets options to default

while re-reading the spreadsheet from disk, so edits made since the last

run are picked up automatically. The app is high-DPI aware and stays sharp

on 4K displays.

What it doesn't do

In the interest of setting accurate expectations: this is a spreadsheet-to-

image tool, not a label design suite. It doesn't lay out multi-barcode

sheets for a specific label sheet product, and it doesn't print directly.

Drag-and-drop depends on the bundled tkinterdnd2 component — if a

particular build doesn't include it, the Choose File button covers the

same functionality. SVG preview is rasterized on screen because the

interface toolkit can't render vectors live, though the saved SVG file

itself is a true vector. Non-Latin label text needs a font that covers

that script; on Windows this is handled automatically via Segoe UI,

Nirmala UI (Bengali and other Indic scripts), and Microsoft YaHei

(Chinese). These are documented limitations, not surprises you'll

discover mid-project.

Who it's for

Anyone generating barcode images in bulk from existing data: small

retailers labeling inventory from a product spreadsheet, warehouses

printing pick labels, publishers generating ISBN barcodes for a catalog,

or anyone who has outgrown creating barcodes one at a time in an online

generator. It runs entirely offline on Windows 10 and 11, 32-bit or

64-bit — no account, no upload of your product data to a third-party

server, no per-image cost. No pandas or numpy dependency means the

installer stays small and nothing needs to compile on your machine.