I have a Motorola phone that has a built in bar code/qr code scanner that I want to use to scan approximately 100 storage bins, typically on a monthly basis. Im going to use an excel spreadsheet to log the scanned information, but I cant figure out a way to have each scan time stamped. Whether it be something written into the qr code (which i dont know how to do) or some type of formula in excel that says something along the lines of "when information is populated into A2, input date/time into A3 automatically"

Anyone knowledgeable on a possible solution that might be able to help me with this?

Thanks in advance

4/11/2012 4:56:31 PM

How are you imputing the information you currently have into the excel sheet?

4/11/2012 5:52:23 PM

The phone has a button dedicated to the bar code reader, so I open Excel, place the cursor in whatever cell I want the bar code info to go into, and then press the button to scan the bar code.
I figured out out to get the time stamp in cell A3 when anything shows up in A2 (from my description above) but it requires a circular reference in Excel. However, Windows Mobile cant handle circular references so now that wont work.

I'd still like to figure out how to write in instructions into the qr code to tell it to also populate time/date when scanned, and not just the basic text.

4/12/2012 10:10:13 AM

You need to URL encode special characters in the QR code.

For example, if you want to have it go between two cells, you need a tab, and you can use the date functions, I think.

So you want the text of your QR code to be like this in "text":

someserialnumber*TAB*=TODAY()

Which would make the actual QR code string:

someserialnumber%09%3DTODAY%28%29

That might work, but I dont have a way to test, you may need a carriage return at the end, which is %0A

[Edited on April 12, 2012 at 10:17 AM. Reason : .]

4/12/2012 10:17:16 AM