Generating 2D (PDF417 or QR) barcodes using Excel VBA

Question

I would like to generate a 2d barcode (PDF417 or QR codes) in an Excel cell using macros. Just wondering is there any free alternatives to paid libraries to do this?

Answer 1

I know this is quite an old and well-established post (though the very good existing answer has not been accepted yet), but I would like to share an alternative that I prepared for a similar post in StackOverflow in Portuguese using the free online API from QR Code Generator.

The code is the following:

Sub GenQRCode(ByVal data As String, ByVal color As String, ByVal bgcolor As String, ByVal size As Integer)
On Error Resume Next

    For i = 1 To ActiveSheet.Pictures.Count
        If ActiveSheet.Pictures(i).Name = "QRCode" Then
            ActiveSheet.Pictures(i).Delete
            Exit For
        End If
    Next i

    sURL = "https://api.qrserver.com/v1/create-qr-code/?" + "size=" + Trim(Str(size)) + "x" + Trim(Str(size)) + "&color=" + color + "&bgcolor=" + bgcolor + "&data=" + data
    Debug.Print sURL

    Set pic = ActiveSheet.Pictures.Insert(sURL + sParameters)
    Set cell = Range("D9")

    With pic
        .Name = "QRCode"
        .Left = cell.Left
        .Top = cell.Top
    End With

End Sub

It gets the job done by simply (re)creating an image from the URL built from the parameters in the cells. Naturally, the user must be connected to the Internet.

For example (the worksheet, with contents in Brazilian Portuguese, can be downloaded from 4Shared):