Overview

Why write about faxes in a book on e-mail? Today's trend in communications is toward integrated messaging systems that may include several means of sending messages, and Outlook is no exception. Chances are that you can send a fax to someone from Outlook as easily as you can send an e-mail message.

Perhaps the most important thing to understand about faxes is that a fax is actually a page-size graphic. When you send a fax, special software turns your text or document into a graphic image in the format used by fax machines. The fax machine on the receiving end prints out the graphic. If the receiving machine is a computer, it saves the incoming fax as a file and routes, prints, or displays it according to the settings for the particular receiving program.

Even though many different fax programs can be used with Outlook, the techniques for sending a fax are essentially the same for all of them. In this chapter, we cover the different ways you can send a fax from Outlook and explore what you can do with incoming faxes. After some general pointers, we look at how to work with a few of the features of Microsoft Fax and WinFax SE in particular.

Choosing Fax Software

Many different fax programs are compatible with Microsoft Outlook, but the only software included in the Microsoft Outlook 2000 package is Symantec WinFax Starter Edition (WinFax SE), which works solely in Internet Mail Only (IMO) mode (see Chapter 9...