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laurap41811189
Participant
October 20, 2021
Answered

Special character in QR CODE BUSINESS CARD - INDESIGN

  • October 20, 2021
  • 5 replies
  • 8513 views

Hi all, i need to figure out how can I solve the problem of special characters in name and surname of a business card qr code generated with Insedign.

When I text in the QR Code for business card frame the special characters: à è é they're not correctly displayed on iphone (see the attached file) -> Lurà is displayed with differen signs.

Please let me know if there's something I can do to fix this.

    Correct answer Colin Flashman

    The issue is than my client wants to have for all of his employees a business card with a qr code and he doesn't want to "warn" the future people network to use a specific decoder app since the majority used to scan all qr code with iphone camera.  I really don't understand why all the free online app can create a QR code with special characters and I can't handle it on InDesign or Illustrator. I guess it's better for me to use an online app for the names than required special characters instead of using InDesign and insert the online generated qr code in it (luckly I don't have so many names with special character) but I hope this bug will be fixed soon.


    I see it is already filed as a bug report... but needs more traction. To vote to get the attention of the Adobe Engineers to look at this fault, vote here: https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/33286600-qr-code-with-non-english-letters

    5 replies

    Tedvat
    Tedvat
    Participant
    April 19, 2024

    Hi.

     

    Try to put ";VERSION:3.0" behind one of the text boxes.

    See screenshot : )

      James Gifford—NitroPress
      James Gifford—NitroPress
      Legend
      April 19, 2024

      This is clever, but however well it may work under limited circumstances, it's not a hack that should be used.

       

      I created several QR codes with the added version string in various fields and following various text. What I got, from a ZXing decode, was... a raw data decode still flagged VERSION:2.1, with the VERSION:3.0 string more or less wherever I put it. This may fool or override some devices, but given all the other problems with getting QR/vCard to read properly on any majority of devices, I don't think this works as well as you think it might.

       

      Using Plain Text and a clean vCard/MeCard data structure is the proper method.

        Tedvat
        Tedvat
        Participant
        April 19, 2024

        Of course James, Plain Text is the way to go. But this fixed the problem for a customer of mine, who unfortunately had no knowledge of vCard data. And this fixed the iPhone problem temporarily. I would definitely use vCard myself.

        S
        StenlyTryskacz
        Participant
        November 1, 2023

        Hello,

        tl;dr:
        1) use vcard v3.0 
        2) switch ADR and TEL rows

         

        longversion:

        I am probably late to the party, but I had exactly same problem and I think I managed to fix it.

        same problem - áíéý and other letters are displayed wrongly on iPhone (same as in screen from laurap41811189), but Android is OK, tried diff vcard version 2.1 -> 3.0, tried some encoding tweaks, all with no success... BUT!...

        i tried some online QR VCARD generator and noticed they have version 3.0 and mainly ADR row in front of TEL row so i switched their positions (you have also ADR after TEL) ... and voilà, scan on iPhone is now OK

         

        i hope this helps someone, because I spend like 3 days with this 😄

        James Gifford—NitroPress
        James Gifford—NitroPress
        Legend
        November 1, 2023

        According to the vCard standard, the order of data elements is not critical. However, any given QR reader/vCard interpreter may have other/"better" ideas and no one's better at the latter than Apple. 🙂

        S
        StenlyTryskacz
        Participant
        November 2, 2023

        Thats why i spent 3 days with it, didn't think about row order at all, but it was the only difference between my vcardQR and vcardQR that was scanned properly 🙂 and somehow it fixed iPhone scans

        to clarify, i am not using InDesign, i have my javascript project where i was solving this, and this was only thread with same problem i found 😉

         

        have a great day y'all

        Ten A
        Community Expert
        Ten ACommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        October 23, 2021

        You can use QR CodeMakerPro in CC Market Place.

         

        L
        laurap41811189Author
        Participant
        October 25, 2021

        I added the plug in but still, I don't know how to add special characters correctly. I also tried in illustrator with the xml code on QR CodeMaker but still, I don't know how to add à, é, è etc. I think i should add something like "encoding" but I'm not an xml expert.. ps. version 3.0 don't change anything.

        BEGIN:VCARD
        VERSION:2.1
        N:Lurà;Name
        FN:Name Lurà
        ORG:Name of the company
        TITLE:Role
        TEL;WORK;VOICE:12345678
        ADR;WORK:;;NomeVia;Città;CH;6901;Svizzera
        EMAIL;WORK;INTERNET:nome.lura@nomeazienda.ch
        URL:https://www.nomeazienda.ch
        END:VCARD

        Ten A
        Community Expert
        Ten ACommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        October 25, 2021

        You can copy and paste like below.

         

        Jens Trost
        Jens Trost
        Inspiring
        October 21, 2021

        I'm working currently on the same issue, my two cents:


        Creating a vCard from scratch (meaning the actual text-code of a vCard QR code // see adobe's help pages on data merge and QR codes) and changing the syntax from vCard v2.1 to 3.0 fixes the issue on iPhones. I noticed that v3 works better on iPhones while Android has no issues with either one.

        Sidenote:

        if you have special characters like with czech names and create QR codes on the fly via data merge – you're screwed. There is definitely a bug with the QR code generation via data merge. There are various bug reports on uservoice but...
        If you copy&paste the exact same vCard code into the "Generate QR code" textbox it creates a different QR code which is working fine.
        You could script that, to get it working with data merge but that's a whole other topic

        Colin Flashman
        Community Expert
        Colin FlashmanCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        October 20, 2021

        This appears to be a bug in InDesign's QR Code mechanism. I was able to replicate this fault by using InDesign's Edit QR Code feature to create a business card with diacritical letters and experienced the same outcome as the original poster when attempting to view the result with the camera function of the iphone.

         

        Similarly, if making a QR Code using data merge using letters with diacritical characters, the same errors occur.

         

        I suggest filing this as a bug with indesign.uservoice.com

         

         

        If the answer wasn't in my post, perhaps it might be on my blog at colecandoo!
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