- Get Connected
- Sending a Fax
- The Fax Queue and Beyond
- Receiving Faxes
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Sending a Fax
Sending a fax is almost as easy as printing. Really.
On your Mac, create or open a document that you want to send as a fax. For example, perhaps you've written a letter in Word and would prefer to send it by fax rather than mail it to its recipient. (Hey, a stamp costs 37 cents and a one-page fax takes less than a minute, so faxes can save money as well as time.)
Choose Print from the File menu in the program, or press Command-P. When the Print dialog box opens, it probably will look something like the one in Figure 1 (this one is from Word 2004).
Figure
1 The Print dialog box for a Word document on Mac OS X 10.3.Click the Fax button. The Print dialog box changes to display fax options, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure
2 Clicking the Fax button in the Print dialog box displays the fax
options.Choose your fax/modem from the Modem drop-down list. The options will include your internal modem; if your computer is on a network or is Bluetooth enabled, you'll also get options for shared faxes or Bluetooth. For this example, I'm using my eMac's internal modem (see Figure 3).
Figure
3 Be sure to choose the correct modem from the pop-up menu.The To field in the Print dialog box is where you enter the recipient's fax phone number. There are two ways to do this. One way is to simply type the phone number exactly as it should be dialed, as in Figure 4.
Another method is to type the name of someone in your address book who has a fax number. As you type, Mac OS X tries to match what you type with an address book entry. It displays the name and fax number, as shown in Figure 5.
Figure
4 Enter a phone number the way it must be dialed. (No, this isn't a
real fax number.)
Figure
5 You can enter the name of someone whose contact info in your address book
includes a fax number.If you want to send the fax to more than one person, type a comma after each phone number. A separate fax will be sent to each person.
Enter a subject for the fax in the Subject box. This text identifies the fax in the fax queue and appears in the subject line of a cover sheet, if you decide to include one (step 8 covers how to create a cover sheet).
If you must dial one or more digits to get an outside line, enter the appropriate digits in the Dialing Prefix box. For example, if you're faxing from an office and need to dial 9 to get an outside line, enter 9 in the box. The same rule applies if you're using your laptop in a hotel that requires you to dial 9 or 8 to get a regular dial tone.
NOTE
Don't use the Dialing Prefix box to enter 1 for a long-distance number.
If you want to include a cover page with the fax, select the Cover Page option and enter your message in the box beneath the option. The message will appear on the cover sheet along with the recipient info from the To field, your name, the date and time (including time zone), the subject from the Subject field, and the number of pages after the cover sheet.
CAUTION
Be careful when you type your cover page message! Pressing Enter/Return will "click" the Fax button and send your fax, possibly before you're ready.
When you're done specifying your fax setup, the Print dialog box might look like Figure 6.
Figure
6 Example of fax options that include cover page text.Click Fax. The document is digitized and sent to the fax queue. Moments later, you'll hear a dial tone and some dialing as your computer sends the fax.
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