ZPLToolkit

^FD

Field DataPreview: exact

Supplies the content of a field — the text, the barcode payload or the QR data.

Syntax

^FDa

Parameters

ParameterDescription and accepted valuesIf omitted
aThe field content. Ends at the next ^ or ~, so those characters must be escaped with ^FH.Up to 3072 bytes of printable dataNone

How it works

^FD carries the data of the field being built. What the printer does with it depends on the command that came before: after a font command it is text, after ^BC it is the Code 128 payload, after ^BQ it is the QR content.

The data runs from the ^FD to the closing ^FS. A caret or a tilde inside it ends the field early, because those characters introduce commands — this is the single most common cause of labels where the text stops halfway and strange things print after it. ^FH is how you escape them.

The practical limit is 3072 bytes per field. Characters outside plain ASCII need ^CI28 to select UTF-8 first, otherwise accented letters print as the wrong glyph.

Example

ZPL
^XA
^FO40,50^A0N,40,40^FDHello, label^FS
^XZ

Rendering…

One text field: a font, a position, the data, and the separator that ends it.
Open in the viewer

How the preview on this site handles it

Fully supported, including ^FH escapes. Text is drawn with a browser font, so glyph widths are close to but not identical to the printer's resident fonts.

Common mistakes

  • A literal ^ or ~ in the data — a price like '100^' or a URL with a tilde. Use ^FH and write _5E or _7E.
  • Accents without ^CI28. The bytes reach the printer but map to the wrong characters in the default code page.
  • A second ^FD before the ^FS. Only the last one survives, so the first field prints empty.

See also