How To Create Basic Labels

There may come a time when you need to send out a mass letter to all of your patients. MacPractice makes this a little easier by allowing your office to create address labels for all patients in your database. This document will take you through the process to create a single and/or multiple labels from your database.

• Differences in Build 11 and Above
• Activating the Label Form
• Creating a Label for a Single Patient
• Creating Labels for Multiple Patients
• Printing the Labels

Differences in Build 11 and above
Before going into details on creating labels, it is important to clarify that in MacPractice Builds 11 and higher, we've adjusted the behavior of the software. If you are on MacPractice Build 11 and higher, the drawer functionality for lists was moved to the List Window, located in the Window Menu.

Any time you need to access a List generated from a Report, you'll navigate to the List Window. The workflow presented in this article was written for Build 7.3 and earlier, but the workflow itself is largely unchanged other than the List Window.

For more information regarding drawer changes in Build 11, please refer to this article. If you have any further questions, don't hesitate to contact MacPractice Support.

Activating the Label Form
Before your office can start using the Avery 5160 form you may need to activate the form if it has not been done already. To activate the form go to References > Forms > select the desired label form (in this case the Avery 5160).

Once the form is selected, check the "Form Active" checkbox in the main area of the MacPractice window. Save your changes by going up to the Edit menu and selecting Save Record, or using the Command-S keyboard shortcut, then the form is ready for use. You will be able to access you Avery 5160 form from the Patient, Schedule or Note abilities under the Form node in the sidebar.

Creating a Label for a Single Patient
If you wish to create a single label for one of your patients, locate the patient in one of the three abilities: Patient, Schedule, Notes. With the patient selected, click on the name of the label and it will populate in MacPractice with the patient's information.

The Print window will open in order to print the label.

Creating Labels for Multiple Patients

In addition to creating a label for a single patient, labels can be created through a patient list. First, create the list you wish to use for labels. This can be done from your Reports ability as long as the report has the Make List button option in the bottom right. If this button is not available, you can create your patient list using your drawer (Or the Lists Window if on Build 11+)

 

In the drawer, under the List tab click the plus key to create a New Folder. Name the folder by clicking on the line and enter the name. Click again in a blank area of the drawer to save the folder's name. When you have named the folder, start to drag the desired patients' names into the folder. With the list of patients created, highlight the folder name and drag it to your label form to generate the labels for the patients contained within the folder.

 

When the List item is dropped over the form in the sidebar, your Print window will open and you can print this label.

In MacPractice Build 11 and above, you'll instead be dragging the list from the Lists Window, but the functionality is essentially the same. Drag and drop the List to the desired form.

Printing the Labels

When a List from the drawer is dropped on a form, the print window will open up allowing you to select settings for the labels. To access these features, click Advanced or Show Details button next to the Printer menu.

In the middle of your Print window, select MacPractice MD, DDS, DC or 20/20 from the pop-up menu if it is not already set. Once selected, you will be able to use the "Number of Labels" & "Starting Label Position" options:

• Number Of Labels: Allows you to generate as many labels as you need. For example:if you enter 2 into this field, you will print out the patient name(s) 2 times on your label sheet. NOTE: MacPractice will remember the number entered in the "Number of Labels" field so you will need to change this back to one when you are finished, otherwise it will print XX names for each patient you pull into the labels the next time you print labels.
• Starting Label Position: Allows you to select the position you want the labels to start, left to right. This allows you to use an entire sheet of labels, even if you only print a few at a time. For example: you enter 5 in the field, when you print, the label will start in the 5th position on the label sheet.