Office Suite

[packets]

Are there any issues or concerns using Libre Office (http://www.libreoffice.org/) and Open Dental (OD), or Foxit Reader (http://www.foxitsoftware.com/) and OD?

[jordansparks]

Well, you can't use it for our form letters feature. OOo is useful for general office tasks, but it has nothing to do with Open Dental. There's no interaction between the programs.

[packets]

I have a practice wondering whether to purchase MS Office or just use an open source free office suite...

[jordansparks]

If they are going to create merge letters from Open Dental, they will need Word on the workstations that are doing the creation. So they could get away with using it on just one or two workstations. But keep in mind that most offices do not care about our letter merge feature, and will not use it at all.

[openwide]

What is the letter merge feature?

[jordansparks]

It's for creating letters through Word for single patients at a time.
http://www.opendental.com/manual/lettermerge.html

I doubt they will need it. We have other ways of outputting letters that are easier. And if they need to do a merge that involves a list of patients instead of a single patient, then they don't need Word.

[drtech]

We never use MS Word because we never use letter merge. Open Office/Libre Office will work fine for most people and that way you can have it on all workstations all the time and don't have to worry about licenses, etc...