The text below comes from the author of the font Matthew Welch:

Can you believe there are people who would charge you for a barcode font like this? It took very little time to make this so I thought I'd donate it to the world. It is suitable for scanning even at fairly small point sizes (with a laser printer). I have tested printed copies of this font with a couple different scanners and itworked perfectly.

This is 3 of 9 (sometimes called "code 39"), a widely used barcode standard that includes capital letters, numbers, and several symbols. This is not the barcode for UPC's (universal price codes) found on products at the store. However, most kinds of barcode scanners will recognize 3 of 9 just fine.

To create a valid 3 of 9 barcode you have to begin and end it with a special character. Scanners look for this character to know where to start and stop reading the barcode. It is represented in this font with the '*' character. So, to create a barcode for the text "ABC123" you have to type out "*ABC123*". Note that barcode
readers will not include the *'s in the text they return. They will just give you the "ABC123".

Two versions of 3 of 9 are included. The font called "Free 3 of 9" is the basic 3 of 9 standard. It includes letters and these symbols: $ % + - . and /. The font called "Free 3 of 9 Extended" covers the extended 3 of 9 standard. It includes all the ASCII characters.

Special note to MS Word users: There is a default setting in Word that changes text surrounded by *'s into bold text. This setting must be disabled for these fonts to work, otherwise the * characters that are necessary for the barcode to scan properly will be lost and the thickness of the bars will be altered. I have a copy of Word '97. The
setting might be found in a different place in other versions but this is how I disabled it. From the Tools menu open the AutoCorrect dialog box. On the AutoFormat tab uncheck the box for "*Bold* and _underline_".

Download 3 of 9 Font