Importing Letters from Floppy Disk

Date of Tech Note: 19 July 1999
Enhancement: 19 July 1999
Bug Fix: N/A

Description

Most letters that are created for the physicians have been typed using a computer and a word processor. To save on toner, and paper, and your time, you can encourage those giving you letters to send them to you on floppy disk. Once you have them on floppy disk you can quickly import them into MediFile.

This tech note describes this process.

Step 1:

Insert Floppy Disk into Super Drive.

Step 2:

Double click on the icon of the floppy disk.

Step 3:

From the Edit Menu select ‘Select All’ to highlight all the files on the disk.

This will highlight all the files on the floppy disk.

Step 4:

Click on one of the file icons and hold the mouse button down so you can drag the files to the folder called ‘Floppy Files’.

You will see the dialog showing the files being copied from the floppy disk to the Floppy Files folder on the computer’s hard drive.

Step 5

Once the files have been copied from the floppy disk you should remove the floppy from the floppy drive. To accomplish this, drag the icon of the floppy disk to the trash can.

Repeat steps 1 thru 5 for each of the floppy disk you have to get the files for.

Step 6

Drag the folder of the ‘Floppy Files’ over top of the MacLinkPlus Plus ‘ to Text Macintosh document’ icon.

This will start the conversion process. Sit back and let MacLinkPlus perform its work. It will determine the format of each of the files and use the appropriate translator. So it doesn’t matter that you may have files from MacOS Word Perfect, Windows Word 97, Windows Word Perfect, and Word Perfect 5.2 for DOS. MacLinkPlus will convert each file correctly. While it is doing the conversion you will be shown the following dialog.

Once the files have all been converted you will see that you have a new folder on your desktop called ‘Floppy
You will need to have previously created the translation icon (program) using MacLinkPlus.

Letters (Converted)

Step 7

From the Application menu select MediFile (4D Client 1.5.4f13 PPC Intl).

Step 8

From the Task menu select Import Letters.

Step 9

Click on the Desktop button to get to the desktop of your MacOS computer.

Step 10

Select Floppy Letters (Converted) and click on the Select button.

MediFile will now start importing the letters. You will be shown a dialog showing the progress of the importing process.

Once MediFile is down the Importing dialog will go away. Once this is done, MediFile has imported all the letters.

Step 11

Drag the ‘Floppy Letters (Converted)’ folder onto the trash can.

Step 12

Open the Floppy Letters folder and drag all the files onto the trash can.

Step 13

From the Productivity Menu select Letters.

Step 14

Using the Find button on the control bar at the bottom find all letters with a status of To Link.

Step 15

You will now be shown all the letters in the system that have a status of ‘To Link’. This will include the letters you just imported.

Step 16

Select a letter by clicking on it, and click on the Modify button.

Step 17

Read enough of the letter to determine who the patient is, who the letter is from, and who the letter is to. From this use the standard letter method of finding each of those from within the letter. (Refer to the Chapter on Letters if you need more information).

Essentially you need to fill in the information that have an arrow in them in the figure above.

Remember to change the status from To Link to the appropriate status. The appropriate status’ to use are:

To Read - If this is a letter to a physician in the clinic from another physician
To Print - If this is a letter that needs to be printed out and mailed
Typed - If this is a letter that needs to be proofed by the physician.

Once you have done this save the letter.

Repeat steps 14 & 15 until all the letters are linked.