QR codes for a multilingual exhibit set

QR codes for a multilingual exhibit set

Thirteen exhibits and two languages sounds like a labelling task. In practice it is a spreadsheet problem wearing a museum's clothes, and the honest starting point is the mistake a real OpenQR customer already made: hitting the free three-code limit on exhibit one, opening a second account to keep going, hitting it again, and ending up managing twenty-six codes across three separate logins with no shared folder and no way to compare an English scan against its Italian pair. This page is the version of that job that avoids all of it, spelled out concretely enough to paste straight in.

What three accounts actually costs you

Signing up again each time the free allowance runs out feels like the path of least resistance in the moment. What it actually buys is three separate logins nobody wrote down anywhere, a scan count for "Exhibit 03 - EN" sitting in one dashboard and "Exhibit 03 - IT" sitting in another with no way to view them side by side, and a real institutional risk: if the colleague who created account two or three leaves, whoever inherits the project may not have the password, and eight or seventeen printed labels quietly become unrepointable.

Three free accountsOne Pro account (£9/month)
Setup effortSign up again each time the cap is hitOne sign-up, one paste of the full 26-row list
Who can edit a codeWhoever remembers which account owns itAnyone with the one shared login
Comparing EN vs IT engagementNot possible; scans are split across dashboardsOne dashboard, every exhibit, every language
Continuity if staff changeA leaver can take a working login with themThe account belongs to the institution, not a person

The exact cross-product, spelled out

Thirteen exhibits times two languages is twenty-six codes, and the cross-product is genuinely just this table, continued to Exhibit 13. Build it once and every future language is one more column, not a rethink.

ExhibitLanguageDestinationLabel
01ENhttps://example.org/collection/roman-coinsExhibit 01 - EN
01IThttps://example.org/collection/roman-coins-itExhibit 01 - IT
02ENhttps://example.org/collection/iron-age-torcExhibit 02 - EN
02IThttps://example.org/collection/iron-age-torc-itExhibit 02 - IT
… continuing to Exhibit 13

Building the label with a formula, not by hand

Typing twenty-six labels by hand is exactly how the three-account problem starts: it's slow enough that hitting the free cap partway through feels like a reason to open another account rather than finish the list first. A single spreadsheet formula avoids the retyping entirely. With the exhibit number in column A and the language code in column B, a label column of ="Exhibit "&TEXT(A2,"00")&" - "&B2 produces "Exhibit 01 - EN" and copies down all twenty-six rows in seconds.

A2: 01        B2: EN
C2: ="Exhibit "&TEXT(A2,"00")&" - "&B2   →   "Exhibit 01 - EN"

The label is also the exported filename

The bulk generator's label field becomes the downloaded file's name, so a consistent "Exhibit 03 - IT" label sorts the print handoff folder for you: no separate renaming pass, and the print house sees twenty-six files already in floor order.

Which language pairs to prioritise

Two languages doesn't mean the second one is guessed. If the museum already tracks visitor origin, whether from a booking system, a school-visit register, or simply the country split in existing scan analytics, that tells you which language earns its place first. Add a third language only once the first two are proven by actual scans, rather than interpreting on spec for a language nobody who visits reads.

Twenty-six codes is a full multilingual collection and, at three free dynamic codes per account, is comfortably past the free allowance no matter how it's split. One Pro account at £9/month covers the whole set, with room to add a third language or a fourteenth exhibit without opening a fourth account.

Plan the full cross-product before generating anything: count exhibits times languages, and if the total is above three, start on Pro rather than the free tier so the whole set lives in one account from the first code.
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