Mail Merge Images
You can merge any of the latest images in a patient’s record right into their documents. This way you can include a patient’s Lateral Cervical x-ray in the exercise document telling them how to do cervical tractioning – very powerful for exercise compliance.
The best way to insert an image is to put it into the cell of a table. While not necessary, you will get better control over how big the image is formated when you create your document.
*** NOTE *** You need to put a tick in the ‘Images’ column for the document template.
To insert an image
- Open a document in Settings..Clinical..Document Templates.
- Create a table
- In the table properties, select ‘Options’. Un-check ‘Automatically resize to fit contents’
- Click into the cell where you want to insert the images
- Insert a field: Word 2003-2007 Insert..Field. Word 2010: Insert..QuickParts..Field
- Select ‘INCLUDEPICTURE’ from the list of Field Names
- In ‘Filename or URL’ enter the filename for the image you want from the table below
- Click OK. You should now see the image of the first active patient in your database. If they don’t have that image, you will not see the placeholder image
*** Make sure you have a tick in the ‘Images’ column for the document you want to merge images into. Otherwise you’ll just get the last patient’s images, not the ones you want!
That’s it. Now when you merge the document into the patient’s file, it will update with their image.
Images available
| Image | Filename |
| AP Cervico-Thoracic | C:\MergeImages\AP Cervico-Thoracic.jpg |
| AP DPA with Orthotics | C:\MergeImages\AP DPA with Orthotics.jpg |
| AP DPA | C:\MergeImages\AP DPA.jpg |
| AP Lumbo-Pelvic | C:\MergeImages\AP Lumbo-Pelvic.jpg |
| Ferguson | C:\MergeImages\Ferguson.jpg |
| Lateral Cervical | C:\MergeImages\Lateral Cervical.jpg |
| Lateral DPA with Orthotics | C:\MergeImages\Lateral DPA with Orthotics.jpg |
| Lateral DPA | C:\MergeImages\Lateral DPA.jpg |
| Lateral Lumbar | C:\MergeImages\Lateral Lumbar.jpg |
| Lateral Thoracic | C:\MergeImages\Lateral Thoracic.jpg |
| Patient Photo | C:\MergeImages\Patient Photo.jpg |
Extra Info
If you don’t have any image type in your first active patient, you can still do the doc editing. You’ll just see a placeholder from word saying it can’t find the image. When you do the merge with a patient who has that image type, the image will fill correctly.
If you click on an image and press SHIFT-F9 you’ll see the image switch to the field code that underlies the image. You can then cut and paste that to another location and carefully edit to change the filename according to the table above. This might be a bit easier than doing the whole thing over. Also let’s you see exactly what will merge there.
To refresh the image if it’s changed in the mergeimages folder, select the image in word and press F9.
The merged images may look distorted when you’re looking at them in preview, but don’t worry, when you merge they will maintain their proper aspect ratio. It’s a Word thing 🙂
I can’t seem to get this to work. DPA images when merged remain as the first patient’s images and x-rays say that the file is in a different location. Any thoughts
It should just work. The settings are a little tricky(!) If you’re still having trouble with this, submit a support ticket with a specific case and description of how to reproduce the problem.