Weirdness with USPS Click-n-Ship: Barcode doesn't print.

[Jeff7]

The really weird part: Everything else does print.

I'm posting this for my mom, who's having this problem. The entire label and page prints out, but where the barcode itself should be, it's just blank. Not garbled, not weird-looking, just nothing there. USPS Priority Mail, there's the return address, the Ship To address, the delivery confirmation #, and all that. Just no barcode.

Has anyone else ever seen anything like this before? My mom tried talking to some support thing at the Postal Service. They could only tell her to download Adobe Reader, which isn't at all close to being the problem - she's got a reader already, which is of course how she was able to print the thing in the first place.

Pic.

 

[Fardringle]

If she doesn't have the most current version of Adobe Reader (or at least the same or newer version as the one that the USPS site uses to create the pages), then it's possible that the reader she has isn't capable of recognizing/reproducing the barcode graphic, in which case the tech support person was entirely correct. Even if this is not the problem, upgrading to the newest version of Adobe Reader is the first step to narrow down the possibilities.


Edit: The click-n-ship system only requires Adobe Reader 5.0 or newer, so unless her reader is REALLY old or she's using a reader other than the Adobe Reader (which may not be 100% compatible) then make sure the print dialog in Adobe Reader (right after you click the Print button) shows "Document and Markups" under Comments and forms: at the top of the window.

 

[Jeff7]

If she doesn't have the most current version of Adobe Reader (or at least the same or newer version as the one that the USPS site uses to create the pages), then it's possible that the reader she has isn't capable of recognizing/reproducing the barcode graphic, in which case the tech support person was entirely correct. Even if this is not the problem, upgrading to the newest version of Adobe Reader is the first step to narrow down the possibilities.


Edit: The click-n-ship system only requires Adobe Reader 5.0 or newer, so unless her reader is REALLY old or she's using a reader other than the Adobe Reader (which may not be 100% compatible) then make sure the print dialog in Adobe Reader (right after you click the Print button) shows "Document and Markups" under Comments and forms: at the top of the window.

Well she's been using Click-n-Ship for years, and this just suddenly happened. I wonder if it's a new version of Foxit, or what the deal is?

Her system is reasonably new, maybe a year old now, running Win7 64-bit. I'm pretty sure I've had Foxit on her computer for quite a long time, particularly because her previous system, an 800MHz AMD system, could load Foxit in a reasonable amount of time, versus Adobe's 500TB of plugins and who knows what else.
(Those were the days when Foxit could still fit on a floppy disk.)

 

[abekl]

Foxit is a good app, but not 100% compatible with all of readers features. Use reader for printing the usps stuff.

 

[Jeff7]

Yeah, looks like it was something with Foxit, or else with the way the Postal Service renders their PDFs.
I noticed today that at the top of the PDF, where the 2D postage code should appear, all that shows there is the word "Button."

I talked to my mom today though, and got her updated to the latest version of Foxit. I tried it myself too. Foxit does turn the cursor into a hand, as if the barcodes were links or buttons. The barcodes are also highlighted in yellow.

So I don't know if it's another issue Adobe vs Foxit in the "IE vs Firefox" sense, where Firefox follows the W3C standards very closely, whereas IE lets you get away with some funky programming.
In any case, I see barcodes on my Foxit now, so hopefully she'll be ok for next time. (She did figure out a solution on her own though, before I was able to call to help - shipping labels through Paypal. )