Plain text QR — Troubleshooting

Worked example

Garbled accents mean the reader mis-decodes UTF-8; missing line breaks are normal, since the input is one line.

Garbled letters such as é turning into two odd symbols mean the reader decoded UTF-8 bytes as an older single-byte character set. The tool sends proper UTF-8, so try another scanner or the phone camera rather than rewriting. If you must support the oldest readers, spell the key words without accents or add a second Latin-only version.

Missing line breaks are expected here: the input is one line, and anything pasted with line breaks is flattened by the browser. Separate items with a slash or full stop, such as "Room 12 / 2nd floor / lift on the left". If you really need separate lines, make one code per line or per language and label them.

If the reader does not display your text but opens a web search or a link, the string probably looks like an address, a phone number or an email. Rephrase it, for example by adding a leading word, or move to the URL, phone or email types, which are built for that. If the form says "Enter content to create this QR code", the field is empty or only spaces; type some text.

If the printed code is hard to scan, it is too dense for its size. A 69-byte message needs about 49 x 49 modules at level H; halving the sentence gives roughly 37 x 37. Shorten the text, print larger, or export 1000 px or more. A contrast warning under 4.5:1 blocks export; return to the Classic preset.

Short text, accents and line breaks

Decoded text content

Most text-code problems are readers interpreting a string, so test more than one scanner before editing.