Patient Address Labels

 

Sometimes, you may want to print address labels. Ordinarily this will be to print labels for a letter that you are sending to a group of patients via a mail merge. To produce the labels, you should select the same group of patients that are receiving the form letter. There are at least two different ways of producing the labels.

 

Instructions supplied are for Word 2000. Slight variations may apply if a different version of Word is used.

Method 1

This method requires more help from Microsoft Word than the second, and is best used with printers that can be guaranteed to print distances accurately. When using this method, it is imperative that there are no commas contained in the name or address fields for the patients that the labels are for.

 

To set up Rycombe Practice Mangement:

 

1)     First you need to add a new form letter to Rycombe Practice Management. Go to Tools..Form Letter Options..Add..

2)     Give the "letter" a meaningful name, such as label. Then make the following line the body of the letter:

3)     [not a letter][patient], [address]

4)     Note: it is important that square braces “[“ and “]” are used

5)     and press OK.

 

Next create your labels file:

 

1)     Go to the Mail merge dialogue, Tools..Mail Merge..

2)     Select the new letter from the list

3)     Select all of the patients that you want to product the label for

4)     Uncheck the “Start each letter on a new page” option.

5)     Press the "Letter" button.

6)     Add the following line at the start of the document produced: name, address1, address2, address3, address4, address5, address6

7)     Save the file produced.

 

Now open Word

 

1)     Select Tools..Mail Merge

2)     Create..Mailing Labels..New Main Document

3)     Get Data..Open Data Source..Select saved labels file

4)     Field delimiter is “,”, Record delimiter is (enter)

5)     Ignore any “missing fields” or similar errors

6)     Set Up Main Document

7)     Select the appropriate stationery and press OK

8)     Set up your label by creating a template using the appropriate mail merge fields and then press OK

9)     Press Check Errors and select the third option, “Complete the merge without pausing, report errors in a new document”. Press OK

10) Press Merge

 

You should now have a labels file ready to print.

Method 2

This method is a little more hit and miss to start with, in that you need to try it a few times and adjust your form letter parameters so that the document produced will fit cleanly onto your chosen stationery. It hinges on the Form Letter macro [linesnnn], where nnn is the minimum number of lines taken up in a form letter. This form letter macro was introduced in version 2.6k of the software.

 

1)     Set up a form letter for your labels, Tools..Form Letter Options..Add..

2)     \fs23 [envelope][lines9]

3)     Give the form letter a sensible name

 

Merge into a new document:

 

1)     Go to the Mail merge dialogue, Tools..Mail Merge..

2)     Select the new letter from the list

3)     Select all of the patients that you want to product the label for

4)     Uncheck the “Start each letter on a new page” option.

5)     Press the "Letter" button.

6)     Select all of the document  (Ctrl-A)

7)     Use the “Columns” feature within word to organise the labels into the number appropriate to your stationery

8)     Print the labels