Faxing From Your Computer

Even though we have email, electronic messaging and groupware solutions for communicating, there are still lots of people that rely on faxing. I am always amazed by the number of people that will print a document and then put it into a fax machine to send it. This is a waste of time, effort and paper. Windows XP and the soon to be released Windows Vista have integrated support for incoming and outgoing faxes.

All you need is a phone line and modem and a little patience to set it up. Once you have connected the phone line, you install the fax component of Windows.
• Open Control Panel, and click Add or Remove Programs.
• Click Add/Remove Windows Components.
• Select the Fax Services check box, and then click Next.
The Windows Component Wizard takes care of the rest. You will then need to configure sender information, cover pages and tell your computer whether it should also receive faxes. You will now see the fax component when you go to print a document from any software package. Go to www.microsoft.com and type setup faxing in the search box for more details.

In many cases this is sufficient for a small office however in a larger office you may want to share a fax phone line between several people. If you have a Windows Server the procedure is very similar to the above except the installation of a modem is a little more difficult. Alternatively you can use a third party product – there are many out there or you can send and receive faxes through an Internet fax service.