sheets

[Roy Bloom]

I guess I just do not understand why on earth a program like this would have almost no instructions and what instructions are there are outdated.
Why not just use a real world processor like open office instead of a poorly formated program with a very short list of special interest inputs. It took me all weekend.......12 hours each day at least to write an informed consent for Extractions and anesthesia. Why should you an addition to edit fields? Why noit just be able to add them? I sit necesarry to have code behind these fields? It is very frustrating to try and do something so simple and it has to be a guessing game. Do you guys have grids that you overlay on your screens so you know the x and y value locations? How about a bridge to Open Office and use that for sheets. What you see is what you get. Also why all the space in the box when if you type in all the space half the text is gone? The font is so small I can barley tell if it was a period or a comma I placed and words shift etc. The place a background image and using ...paint as was suggested was terrible. Open Office is free and Photoshop is not. I am amazed that anyone could get by with an extraction consent form as it is placed in OD. I have spent literally hundreds of hours modifying open dental the last 7 weeks. I doubot it will take less time to bluetooth a EKG monitor to a patient chart than it has to write one three page consent form. I still have another form for just sedation. I Can't wait. Did the board used to have a spell check feature or was that somewhere else?

[jordansparks]

You should indeed use open office to make your consent form. Then you drop a few fields on top of that background.

[Roy Bloom]

Hi Jordan, that still begs the question........why? Luke said you had to drop it as an image file. Good image programs are expesive(photoshop) Great scanners are expensive. Why not just import as Text? Make that part a pdf so it can not be changed(by patient while your not watching) and leave space for patient name FL, Date, tooth numbers and signature lable and box? It was not explained anywhere I could find that you had to add another signature box to the field on the right to chose from and when the original was picked to add witness and dr sig it would just move the signature where you had placed it in the template that was available on the right after copy from cosent on left . I am not kidding do you guys have a grid you place over the screen for x and Y axis or do you just alwat start at 0,0 and drag and drop? It would be nice to be able to get close. Why should you have to ask to have an input field to be added? Seems like most are about insurance and billing. I do none of that.Why not just be able to add it? If there was a bridge to open office we could make our own templates. Then if there was a deicated server(micro server from HP is 329) and a terabyte of storage(100) we could all share templates. This was done by the two guys that started Practice Works and discontinued prior to Kodak buying the product. Is OD going the same drection? I understand making a living is paramount and I tell everyone i see that has Dentrix and Eagle soft they are wasting thousands( I advertise hugh for OD) and slowing down their network to a crawl...geez have you seen G4....i could drink a cup of coffee waiting for that to finish processing. It is the same thing as ordering Midazolam from Schein for 200 bucks for a 10mL MDV with 1mg/mL or getting the same case of 5mg/mL in a 10mg MDV for 77.00 from Ace surgical. Get more of the exact product for less. I think we live in a world of abundance. I just see no reason to make something that could be so easy so difficult. I could harly read the font at 2 when editing and maximizing the screen just made the edit box move to the upper left and was the same size with a large volume of wasted grey space all over the rest of the screen. Maybe I just don't know how to do it. But then there are those lack of instructions again. I love to play with stuff and experiment but after looking like a homeles guy at the end of a weekend is pushing the boundries of fun. What happened to ez spell check on the board or am I thinking of something else? I really love OD I just hope it really stays Open. I do not have several years to learn C#. I have too many kids and way too many sporting events and practices to attend. Is there a way to free up OD for the Everyman? Also, is there a time limit on the phone with tech support trying to get instructions because they do not exist anywhere else? Or, are so vague and outdated the usefullness of them approaches zero? OK, so maybe I am just a liitle tired and not loking forward to writing another consent for just IV sedation and then another for Implants and then another for Bisphosphonates.....all of which I already have in Word and can not transfer even as a text file.....unless I make it a background image. I have been paying the tech support and upgrade ability more as a donation until recently. Anyone want a 100 votes for a project. It appears most of the support I am going to get is from me by trial and error. I realize this may all sound a bit negative and a lot is lost in context by what is basically email. So, I do want to end this by saying Tech support has always been friendly, informative, professional , easy going and knowledgeable ( although I think Debbie did not get my Cheech and Chong joke.......maybe she did and did not think it was funny) . Have fun out there Partly cloudy with a high of around 72 here in Spring Texas today. Time to get going.

[jordansparks]

I'm really not sure how to answer all of that. I wish Word would export to an image. Printing and scanning really isn't a bad way to get an image. Scanners are not expensive.

If you want to put a bunch of text into a box, make the box a bit bigger than you think you will need. Paste the text in from Word. Set the box slightly larger than the text. Set the box to not grow.

I didn't understand the complaint about the signature boxes. It might make a difference which version you are on.

[Jorgebon]

I read your post and started looking for an utility that would convert text files to image files and found a free software program called Unicode Image Maker. I played with it a while and it works pretty good. For best results, you should first save your text document as a .rtf file. You then import the file and convert it to .gif or .jpg. You'll have to play around with the options menu to get the right size .gif for a 8.5 X 11 page. You can also import .txt files, but you then have to select the whole document in Image Maker and select the color black for the letters. I just tried this at home and tomorrow I'm going to download it at the office. Check it out to see if it helps.
Jorge Bonilla, DMD

[Roy Bloom]

A bridge to open office would still make sheets easier. Also, I am uncomfortable having a consent from on a tablet that is not in PDF and can still be signed on the touch screen.

[Smilesbypayet]

If you want to save a text file as an image, why don't you just so a screen shot? Do PrintScreen (F12), open Paint, paste it in, select the area you want, copy it to something like Photoshop Elements 9 (which is only $99, only $79 for an upgrade), and save as a JPEG/GIF/ or PNG.

[Smilesbypayet]

Hey -- what if you want to create a multi-page exam sheet? For example, my TMD/Migraine questionnaire is about 4 pages long, and it would be a little irritating to make 4 separate Sheets. Not seriously so, just a little, but if there is a way to make a multi-page one, that would be the best.

[wjstarck]

Hey Smilesbypayet-

SnagIt Pro works really well for this, and it's only $49. You can capture screenshots with a wide variety of options, and it will save them in just about any format you need.

http://www.techsmith.com/snagit/

[Roy Bloom]

If you want to save a text file as an image, why don't you just so a screen shot? Do PrintScreen (F12), open Paint, paste it in, select the area you want, copy it to something like Photoshop Elements 9 (which is only $99, only $79 for an upgrade), and save as a JPEG/GIF/ or PNG.

Thats what was done. Did not use elements though. I do not care for paint. If you wanted to use Elements a trial avaiable for free for 30 days. Other programs like open office can do a lot of things. The key is in formatting the text image. I will post some when everything is done. I have someone doing it for me now. Using Team Viewer you can collaborate well. It is also kinda fun to move the mouse just when the other person is trying to move it. My practice model is different than most. I truly do not use 70-80% of Opendental. Like a lot of dentistry it is insurance driven. It amazes me that folks will lower their fees 20-30% just to try and collect 1000.00 a year. Everyone loses..well not everyone.

I do not file insurance. I am paid 100% of my fee at the time of service. I have no employees. I do have several very heavy Craftsman tool chests. They make some really small EKG monitors and that is what I am looking at now. Wow it just hit me I bet I could bluetooth the precordial scope to the tablet it already transmits to a bluetooth ear set . The earplug is killing me. Technology is cool.

Has anyone started banking stem cells from wisdom teeth for their patients?

[Smilesbypayet]

Never got a reply about multi-page Sheets? As in, my TMD/Headache questionnaire is 4 pages, and I'd rather not have to make 4 separate Sheets. Just wondering.

[Roy Bloom]

Never got a reply about multi-page Sheets? As in, my TMD/Headache questionnaire is 4 pages, and I'd rather not have to make 4 separate Sheets. Just wondering.

Only goes to 2000 in length. I do not think they have multiple sheets.