Symptom

BarTender is connected to an Excel spreadsheet, but the data populated on the label does not match Excel or is missing entirely such as the example shown below.

Environment

BarTender 2019 and later

Excel

Diagnosis

This issue is due to the table content in your Excel file. When a column in the spreadsheet contains mixed data (i.e.: some fields are alphanumerical and others numerical.), Excel will auto-detect the type of data entered in the cells, however this auto-detection routine sometimes fails and the data type is formatted incorrectly.
To verify if this is the case, when you look at the fields in BarTender, you may see the field type is set to something like Floating Point (Double).  

Solution

In order to fix this issue, you will need to change the field format to Text in Excel by following the below steps: 

1. Open the database file in Excel, and click on the column header for the column you would like to change.
2. Under the Data tab in the ribbon, select Text to Columns.

3. In the Convert Text to Columns Wizard, steps 1 and 2 relate to the delimitation of the data in the field, and the default settings should be fine.

4. For Step 3, choose Text under the Column Data Format.

5. Click Finish.
6. Save and close the spreadsheet, and close and reopen BarTender. The field will now be formatted as Text.