How to Send and Receive a Fax from Outlook
In the age of the internet, you’d think faxes are on the way out. However, sending and receiving faxes is still necessary for certain industries, and many businesses send, receive and sign faxes on a regular basis.
You might not have a fax machine anymore, but to send and receive faxes, you don’t need one. Thanks to online services like eFax, you can send and receive faxes from your computer and your Outlook email account.
How does this work?
Getting Started with Sending and Receiving a Fax from Outlook
Here are the simple steps to follow to start faxing from Outlook.
1. Set Up Your Online Fax Account
To send and receive faxes via Outlook, you’ll need an online fax account. The setup process is quick and simple. Go to eFax.com and sign up for an account using your Outlook email address.
2. Pick an eFax Number
To choose your eFax number, you first have to choose your location. You can search in various ways, including your area code or by selecting your state. If you prefer, you can also use an existing fax number.
Once you’ve chosen a number, you’ll be asked to provide your information. Enter your name, email address and then choose a password you will use to access your account. Always choose a secure password, preferably not one you’re using for another account. Also, make sure your password is hard to guess.
Next, enter your billing information to pay for monthly subscriptions and other charges. You can use a credit or debit card, whatever works best for you. Finally, you’ll receive an email confirmation to finalize the setup of your account. Verify your email, and you are ready to start faxing.
To send a fax by from Outlook, follow these easy steps:
That’s all there is to it. It’s as easy as sending an email.
With eFax, you can fax from any Outlook account, including msn.com, live.com and hotmail.com email domains. Since your eFax account is not limited to any specific Outlook email address, you can fax from any of them that you choose. This enables you to personalize how you send and receive in specific accounts.
If you don’t want to send a fax now, you can schedule it to go out whenever it is convenient for the recipient, whether according to their time zone or a specific time they need to receive your fax. You don’t have to be online or even logged in to your eFax account at the exact time the fax has to be sent. The scheduling process sends the fax automatically without any input from you.
For professionals and business owners who are always on the go, you can send and receive faxes using Outlook from any mobile device that can connect to the internet. These include iPads, tablets, Chromebooks, Microsoft Surface devices and smartphones. With a cloud faxing solution like eFax, you are not tied to your desktop, office and certainly not a fax machine.
Receiving faxes using eFax is the same as if you had a fax machine in front of you but without the paper, ink and all the printing.
To receive faxes, all you have to do is share your fax number with the person who wants to send you a fax. You’ll receive faxes just like you would an email.
Faxes appear in your Outlook inbox. The sender will show up as the number that sent you the fax, and the fax arrives like an attachment, usually in the form of a PDF. You can open this document like any other email attachment and print it out, read it on your computer or save it to a location on your computer or in the cloud.
Faxes usually show up in your Outlook inbox, but if they show up in your junk or spam folder, simply mark the sender as “safe” or add them to your Outlook contacts. This will ensure that future faxes from that person end up in your regular inbox and you don’t have to go hunting for them.
Once you can reliably see faxes from a sender in your email box, you can treat them as you would any other email with attachments. That gives you all kinds of flexibility.
When you reply to a fax using eFax, your fax will appear as if you sent it from your own fax machine or fax number. The recipient will receive it just like they do any other fax.
You can also sign the fax digitally. eFax offers tools that allow you to return a document with your signature and/or initials, without printing it out, adding your physical signature and then scanning it and sending it back again. The whole process can happen online on your computer or even on a mobile device like a smartphone or tablet.
You can also forward faxes as an email attachment or to another fax number, whether that’s a physical fax machine or another eFax number. If you need to share your fax with someone else, it’s the same process you would use to forward an email or any other message.
Why Is Faxing Through Outlook a Better Option Than a Fax Machine?
The traditional fax machine changed the world of the office in many ways. It enabled users to send a physical document over a phone line. much like sending a photocopy to someone but all in one step. Over time, traditional fax machines have been overtaken by the internet and email.
However, printed fax documents are still necessary for some industries, such as healthcare and real estate. If you want to send a fax the traditional way, you need to:
- Have a landline phone to plug into the fax machine. In certain cases, you may even need to maintain a dedicated line
- Buy a fax machine and keep it in good running condition
- Fill out a cover letter sheet and print the document you want to fax. This means you need a printer, too
- Dial the fax number and hope you don’t get a busy signal or that the paper in the fax machine does not jam
To receive a fax, you would need a fax machine, paper and ink. You would usually need to be next to the fax machine when the document comes through. Paper jams often happen. The image might not come through clearly, and the sender would need to send the fax again. Also, if you’re receiving confidential documents, you don’t want them unattended at the fax machine for anyone unauthorized to snatch them up.
Online faxing with eFax eliminates all of those issues.
Benefits of eFax
Cloud faxing is about more than saving time and resources—it’s bringing faxing into the digital age. Using eFax has a lot of benefits, including:
- Unlimited online cloud storage
- Aside from the ability of fax using Outlook, you get access to an online fax portal and even eFax Messenger on Windows for sending and receiving faxes
- An easy-to-use mobile app for your faxes on the go
- Large file sharing, allowing you to share files that would normally be too large to email or fax
- Electronic signatures to avoid the need to print, sign and scan documents
Fax from Outlook with Ease Using eFax
Faxing from Outlook only requires that you set up an online fax account and choose your eFax number. Once this is done, you will be able to send faxes from any Outlook email account. To receive faxes, simply give out your fax number to anyone who needs it. The fax goes to your inbox as a PDF attachment, which you can then print if you need to. Even when outside the office, you can send and receive faxes anytime, without the need for a bulky fax machine.
With cloud faxing through Outlook, you can forward your faxes like you would an email. You can also digitally sign a fax, saving paper, ink, effort and time.
Send and receive faxes in minutes. Start faxing with eFax now.
