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I am integrating with UPS's Shipping Web Services to improve our warehouse's daily process. UPS returns a shipping label for a package in EPL (Eltron Programming Language). I was able to print the label successfully from C#. However my company uses a perforated label that has a doc tab/label beneath the shipping label that can be attached to any internal documentation. UPS's World Ship software has the ability to print information to this doc tab/label and the business users are requesting that mine does the same.

I contacted UPS and their web service does not support returning the doc tab/label in EPL so I embarked on doing it myself. The first thing I tried to do was to just get an idea of trying to print something below the shipping label. So I tried this command.

A12,1210,0,3,1,1,N,"ACCT#"

I appended this to the end of the EPL provided by UPS and it printed at the very bottom of the 4x6 shipping label. So I then started increasing from 1210 to 1250 and noticed that now my ACCT# string didn't print at all. Upon researching some more I thought maybe the EPL from UPS was setting the label height to 4x6 making it so that I couldn't print. (The label itself is 4x8 with the bottom 2 inches being the doc label). Upon checking their EPL I see the following codes at the start.

q795 
Q1600,24

Reading the EPL Programming manual that came with the Zebra ZP 450 printer I am using tells me that this should set the print height and width to 4x8 which left me stumped. So then I thought maybe since I was appending it to the end of the EPL provided by UPS that the printer was ignoring it since it was after the P1 command. So I tried appending it to the beginning of the EPL string provided by UPS and that didn't make any difference either.

What can I do to get both the shipping label and the doc tab/label to print?

Jeremie
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2 Answers2

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If it were me I would download bartender and then download the bartender printer drivers for an Eltron printer. Set up a dummy printer that prints to a file that uses the eltron printer drivers. Open bartender and create a label with the additional text you want to see at the bottom and print this to your dummy printer that prints to a file. This will give you the raw EPL. You should be able to take this file and see what you need to do in your EPL to make it print correctly.

Cole W
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  • Thanks, I will give this a try hopefully Monday and will report back with the results. – Jeremie Apr 10 '11 at 00:27
  • I set this up but the text file it produces doesn't look like raw EPL commands, in fact I can't see any of the text that the label has on it in the text file at all. – Jeremie Apr 11 '11 at 15:37
  • It's probably because you aren't using fonts that are native to that printer. If you are using arial fonts etc it will look weird. If you change the font type to an Eltron type font. Right click on the field and select properties. If you do not see this font than you need to select a printer from the File->Print dialog that uses the Eltron printer drivers. – Cole W Apr 11 '11 at 16:03
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We use this to include a DocTab in our NRGship for UPS labels. It gets inserted BEFORE the P1\n at the end of the UPS label.

"\nA17,1330,0,3,1,1,N,\"[date]     PACKAGE WEIGHT [weight] [units]\"\nA668,1330,0,4,1,1,N,\"[multi]\"\nA17,1360,0,3,1,1,N,\"SERVICE [service]\"\nA17,1390,0,3,1,1,N,\"TRACKING# [tracknum]\"\nA17,1420,0,3,1,1,N,\"PACKAGE SERVICE OPTION CHARGES [charges] [currency]\"\nA17,1450,0,3,1,1,N,\"REF 1: [ref1]\"\nA17,1480,0,3,1,1,N,\"REF 2: [ref2]\"\nA17,1540,0,3,1,1,N,\"TOTAL BILLED WEIGHT [totalbilledweight] [units]\"\nA17,1570,0,3,1,1,N,\"TOTAL SHIPMENT CHARGES [totalcharges] [currency]\"\nA17,1600,0,3,1,1,N,\"[negotiated]\"\n"

You may need to replace \n and \" in your coding.

andyknas
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