The best and easiest way to print bar codes from an Access database is
to use a bar code ActiveX control. You can use fonts as well however
bar code fonts are more difficult to use depending on the type of bar
code that you need to print. Most bar code symbologies use complex
algorithms for determining the bar/space pattern in the bar code and
they also use checksums that must be calculated so it is not as easy
as selecting the text and changing the font to a bar code font.
Anyhow bar code fonts also produce very poor quality bar codes that
may be difficult to read depending on the type of printer that you use
and the scanner that you read them with.
A good bar code ActiveX control will generate generate a high quality
bar code "vector" image and it will also perform all the calculations
for you so all you would need to do is drop the bar code ActiveX
control into your report, set the type of bar code that you want and
bind the control to the field containing the data that you want
encoded in the bar code. Beware of bar code ActiveX controls that are
wrappers around bar code fonts - they produce the same poor quality
bar codes as bar code fonts because they use fonts to produce the bar
code.
Anyhow, the best bar code ActiveX control that I know of is from TAL
Techniologies
www.taltech.com
They have a demo version of their ActiveX control that you can play
with and it even comes with a sample Access database that demonstrates
how to use it in Access. It also creates the best quality bar codes
that you can get.