First of all, I am not an educated IT type, just doing the best that I can, that was saddled with modifying some canned reports to meet a customer's requirements.  Our customer is requiring bar-coded packing slips with their shipments, and these are not supported by the canned reports in our ERP system.  I need to join a prefix to report data, and in most cases add place-holding characters  for items that may vary in length.  The prefix is unique such that it will distinguish purchase order from part number from quantity, etc. etc.  Can someone help me out?  I will give up my next-born child for some assistance.  Sorry, the first two are already spoken for.