ZPL5004 — Non-ASCII text without ^CI28

The label contains characters outside ASCII (accents, ß, Turkish or Cyrillic letters) but no ^CI command. The ZPL guide gives ^CI0 as the power-up value: a single-byte set based on Code Page 850, so UTF-8 bytes print as wrong characters. The preview assumes UTF-8 and looks right, which is why this shows up only on paper. Zebra recommends a ^CI at the start of every ZPL script; a ^CI28 left over from an earlier job is not something to rely on.

Label that triggers it

^XA^FO50,50^A0N,40^FDCrème brûlée^FS^XZ

Finding: ZPL5004 · line 1:19 — Non-ASCII characters but no ^CI — the printer starts at ^CI0 (single-byte, based on Code Page 850), so UTF-8 text prints garbled. Add ^CI28 at the start of the format

Open the broken label in the editor →

How to fix it

Put ^CI28 right after ^XA and send the file as UTF-8. Some non-Zebra printers that emulate ZPL do not support ^CI28; for those, test a printed label or use the code page the printer documents.

Corrected label

^XA^CI28^FO50,50^A0N,40^FDCrème brûlée^FS^XZ

Open the corrected label in the editor

Commands involved

^CI · ^FD

Related rules

ZPL5001 ^CI code page other than 28 · ZPL5002 ^A@ font not downloaded · ZPL5003 Invalid orientation letter

In CI

npx labelixa validate "labels/**/*.zpl" lints your files and prints this page's address next to each finding. /docs/cli

Lint your ZPL now