BI/XML Publisher: Leading and Trailing zeroes truncated for excel reports

Microsoft Excel is too smart and it identifies whether the value in the cell is a Text or number and applies formatting accordingly. This sometimes becomes an issue for us when we are trying to generate an excel report. For example item number 0003463262360 has all the numbers and starts with zero, this when printed in excel report displays it as 3463262360. Hence all the leading zeroes are truncated. Same issue happens when we have decimal and trailing zeroes.

FO formatting options can be used to get away with this problem. Below is the syntax for same.

<fo:bidi-override direction="ltr" unicode-bidi="bidi-override">
<?ITEM_NUMBER?>
</fo:bidi-override> 

View Barcode in BI Publisher Report when run from Application

Following steps should be completed in order to register your Barcode font to be viewed when report is run from Application.

1) From XML Publisher responsibility, create a font file in XML administration.
Navigation: XML Publisher Administrator -- Administration -- Font FilesCreate Font File
2) Create a font mapping set. Navigation: XML Publisher Administrator -- Administration -- Font Mapping
3) In the template screen , edit configuration -- FO Processing -- Font Mapping Set , provided the corresponding font mapping set
4) The last important step is to always use Territory column while defining Template. E.g. United States.

Now when report is generated from application, barcode font should be viewed.

Related Post:
Using 3 of 9 Barcodes in XML Publisher
Cannot View Output when previewed from RTF Template

For BI Publisher Reports, cannot view Barcodes when previewed output in PDF

Based on question from one of our reader here are the steps to view the barcode fonts when the report is previewed in PDF format from .rtf file.

The problem here is that the fonts are correctly installed in computer but when output is previewed instead of barcodes actual text is seen. One of the possible reason for this could be that the xdo.cfg file is not configured correctly. Below are the steps

1) Copy Barcode font in C:\Windows\Fonts directory.
2) Copy xdo.cfg in C:\Program Files\Oracle\XML Publisher Desktop\Template Builder for Word\config directory. The sample file is already available when BI Publisher desktop is installed.
3) Right click the font file and go to properties. Copy the .ttf file name. Double click the font file to get the family name.
4) Open the xdo.cfg file and paste as follows (My filename is FRE3OF9X.ttf and font family is Free 3 of 9 Extended)

[font family="Free 3 of 9 Extended" style="normal" weight="normal"]
[truetype path="C:\Windows\fonts\FRE3OF9X.ttf" /]
[/font]
Note: replace brackets([ & ]) with angle brackets as was unable to paste due to HTML restriction in comments. There should be sample already available in the xdo.cfg file.

5) Try your report should work fine and barcodes should be correctly displayed.

Related Post:
Using 3 of 9 Barcodes in XML Publisher
View Barcode in XML Publisher report when run from Application

Keywords: Code 39, Barcode 39, 3 of 9 Barcodes

Using 3 of 9 Barcodes in XML Publisher

I am using Code 39(3 of 9) Barcode font for my report. Every thing seems to be fine and barcode seems to be displayed correctly, but not recognized by the barcode reader/gun?
          For code 39 barcode fonts asterisk(*) is used as a start and end delimeter. So any text which is displayed as barcode should have * at the start and end.

E.g. 12345 should be displayed as *12345*