External Edit

The External Edit facility allows users to edit OpenOffice or Word documents linked to OpenVPMS records, using OpenOffice. The document is edited in place; there is no need to download it first to edit it.
 

An External Edit button will be displayed for records with an editable document if they are:

• Document Templates
  These can be edited in Administration - Templates
• Customer Attachments and Letters
  These can be edited in Customers - Documents
• Patient Attachments, Letters, Images and Investigations
  These records can be edited in:
  • Patients - Medical Records - Summary
  • Patients - Medical Records - Documents
  • the Visit editor during Check-In or Consult
• Supplier Attachments and Letters
  These records can be edited in Suppliers - Documents

Prerequisites

In order to use External Edit, the following must be installed on the user's computer:

• Apache OpenOffice - a free open-source office software suite for word processing
• OpenWebStart - a tool used by OpenVPMS to launch OpenOffice to edit a document

Launching External Edit

When launching External Edit, the browser will display a warning dialog like:

Open Executable File

“externaledit.jnlp” is an executable file. Executable files may contain viruses or other malicious code that could harm your computer. Use caution when opening this file. Are you sure you want to launch “externaledit.jnlp”?

Click OK to launch External Edit, which will start OpenOffice with the document to edit.

On the first launch, OpenWebStart will download supporting libraries before OpenOffice starts.

Troubleshooting

Google Chrome downloads an externaledit file without launching it

Try resetting Google Chrome's settings:

1. Enter chrome://settings in the address bar
2. Click Advanced
3. Click Reset and clean up
4. Click Restore settings to their original defaults