Dentrix has more than one route to the same list, and they do not all end in a file. Worth knowing which is which before you spend an afternoon on the wrong one. Paths below were checked against Dentrix's own documentation; exact wording varies by version.
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The quick view: Inactive Patient List
From the Office Manager: Reports → Lists → Inactive Patient List. It surfaces three kinds of people at once — those who have not been in recently, those with no continuing care and no future appointment, and those already flagged inactive in the Family File. Practices commonly set the window at 18 to 24 months.
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The other route: the Continuing Care module
From the Appointment Book: File → Continuing Care, then View → All so everyone overdue for recall appears. Narrow it with Views → Temporary View and change the Last Visit Date Span — the default span is wide, so this is where you set your cut-off.
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Know what the Export button actually gives you
This is the trap. Previewing a report and clicking Export saves a PDF, and File → Print prints it. Neither produces data you can import. A PDF of five hundred patients is not a mailing list.
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Use Letters & Custom Lists for a real list
For something data-shaped, go to Office Manager → Letters & Custom Lists, then Misc → Patient Report (by Filters) → Open List Manager. The List Manager is Dentrix's tool for building custom lists, letters, cards and labels without hand-rolling a Word merge.
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Pull the address fields
The label and list fields include Last Name, First Name, MI, Street Address, City, State and Zip — the four address parts a postcard needs are all there. Select them explicitly; a list of names alone cannot be mailed.
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If you cannot get a CSV out
Dentrix's own documentation does not spell out a CSV export from the List Manager, and versions differ. If yours will not give you one, the reliable fallback is the label or merge data path — the same field set, in a form a spreadsheet can open. Your Dentrix reseller can confirm what your version supports rather than you guessing at it.
Once you have the file
Check the export actually carries street, city, state and ZIP — recall reports are built for phoning people and often ship without them. Then clean it before you upload: collapse households, drop anyone flagged do-not-contact, and repair any ZIP your spreadsheet stripped a leading zero from. What the file needs covers the columns we look for.