Royal Mail 4 State Mailmark C Settings

Royal Mail 4-State Mailmark C is used by the British Royal Mail postal service. The barcode contains an address, encoded in alpha-numeric format (0-9, A-Z).

The content (or message) of the barcode consists of the following 6 parts (or fields), which are detailed here:

Field Length Allowed Characters
Format 1 [01234]
Version ID 1 [1234]
Class 1 [0123456789ABCDE]
Supply Chain ID 2 [0123456789]
Item ID 8 [0123456789]
Destination Post Code plus DPS 9 [ 0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ]
The value "XY11 " is used for this field to specify an International Designation.


As an example, the message "1129966448822CC00AA0A " has Format = 1, Version ID = 1, Class = 2, Supply Chain ID = 99, Item ID = 66448822 and Destination Post Code plus DPS = "CC00AA0A ".
Note: the quotes are not part of the message, but are used here to indicate that the space is part of the message.

There will be a runtime error (i.e. an error occurring during output creation), if the supplied message does not adhere to the format specified above.

Use the following options to configure the output Barcode settings:

  • General group:

    • Include in output checkbox: This determines whether of not this Additional Content entry should be included in the output or not.
      It is checked by default for all new entries.
      This option allow for "libraries" of Additional Content to be created in Presets, libraries from which you can pick and choose what entries you wish to have included, at time of printing.

    • Description edit box: An edit box for adding an optional Description to the Additional Content entry.

  • Position group:

    • Orientation: Use the drop-down to select the orientation of the Barcode added to the page.

    • Output once per sheet: This option relates to Imposition printing (see Imposition), also known as N-Up printing. Select this box to have the Barcode printed once per sheet rather than once per document page.

      If Imposition options such as auto-positioning and scaling were selected, these options won't apply to the Additional Content added to the physical N-Up sheet.

    • Left: Enter the distance between the left margin of the page and the Barcode, in either metric (cm/mm), inch (in) or point (pt) values.

    • Bottom: Enter the distance between the bottom margin of the page and the Barcode, in either metric (cm/mm), inch (in) or point (pt) values.

  • Royal Mail 4-state Mailmark C Properties group:

    • Track height: The height of the small vertical centre bars, in metric (mm/cm). Value must be between1.02 mm and 1.52 mm.

    • Full bar height: Height of the tallest vertical bars, in metric (mm/cm). Value must be between4.22 mm and 5.84 mm.

      The ascender and descender bar heights are automatically calculated based upon the Full and Track bar heights.

    • Module width: Thickness of each bar in the Barcode, in metric (mm/cm). Value must be between0.38 mm and 0.63 mm.

    • Module spacing: The spacing between each bar, in metric (mm/cm). Value must be between0.3 mm and 0.7 mm.

  • Process Tilde:
    This selection is not applicable to this barcode type.

  • Text: Enter the text used to generate the Barcode.

    •  Add button: Click to display a list of variable data that could be used for generating the Barcode.
      This includes metadata fields which must previously have been added in the Metadata options, likely at the Document Tags level (see Metadata Options), as well as some information fields.

  • Condition: Enter the condition which determines whether or not the Barcode will be added to the document at print time. For details on how to create a conditional, see How to Set Conditionals.

    •  Add button: Click to display a list of metadata fields, information fields to add, or common expressions to the condition.