This page provides information and suggestions on ways to annotate faxes in NetCFax

We have tried hard to cover and provide as much functionality as possible, but one are that we have not (yet) been able to address is the ability to annotate faxes.

You need to be aware that although a fax file format is TIF, there are a great many different types of TIF files, and most external viewers do NOT SAVE TIF FILES IN THE CORRECT FAX FORMAT THAT IS REQUIRED FOR NETCFAX TO BE ABLE TO SEND IT OUT AS A FAX.

We understand that quite a few people do want to be to do annotate faxes, to add comments or other notes to a received fax, and then send that fax back to the original sender.

Because our own viewers do not (currently) let you do this, NetCFax lets you select and configure your own Fax file (TIF) file viewer that will be used instead of our internal viewer if you wish to do so.

Please note that we do not have any commercial interest or relationship with any of the fax viewer developers we may mention.  We simply provide this information in the hope that it will let you find a viewer that works for you.  We also do not provide any support for these packages ourselves.

NetCFax does of course already check for any recognized external imaging packages, and lists them in your fax viewers list automatically.  If you have Windows XP, you will usually see one labeled  "Microsoft Office Document Imaging" that comes preinstalled with XP Pro.

This viewer DOES ALLOW you to add notes and annotations to a received fax, but please note that if you want to use NetCFax to send that fax back out to the original sender, you will almost always need to use the "Print" option on that viewer program to send the modified image to the NetCFax client printer, which will then create a valid TIF file in the normal way that NetCFax can then sent out for you.  

Also, please note that although these external viewers may prompt you to save any changes you may make when using them, the fax will NOT BE SAVED to the NetCFax Server, only to the local temporary file on your machine, as these viewers have no direct link to NetCFax.

There are many other and different viewers available on the Web, including the original Windows imaging solution that is now available as a commercial product from Kodak, and another one we have found that may be of interest is called the "Able Fax TIF View"

A 30 day demo version can be downloaded at http://www.graphicregion.com/faxtifview.htm

Please note that this demo version will nag you every time you close the viewer window !!!

However, this package is relatively low cost, and it appears to offer some quite good annotation as well as other features.  

To install this, or indeed any other viewer program, as the default Fax viewer in NetCFax is very simple, as described below :

1 - Select the Faxes menu on the fax client menu

2 - Select the option "Select/Set the default fax viewer" option

3 - Click the "maintain manual list" button

4 - Add an entry similar to that shown below to the list box (This one works for the Able product)

AbleTifView, C:\Program Files\AbleFaxTifView\faxtifview.exe

The first part of the line is simply the display name that is shown in the NetCFax list of available viewers, and must be followed by a COMMA, followed by the full path and file name to the program. Spaces are ignored.

Naturally the path will be wherever you have installed the Able Fax TIF View system or other viewer.

This same individual entry format applies to as many other viewers as you may wish to make available to NetCFax. If you have more than one, you can switch between them very easily in NetCFax using this same window.

Click OK, and the new entry will be added to your list of available viewer automatically. Once the main viewer selection window reappears, just select this entry and click the button marked "Make selected the default viewer application" and then click Close.

Now, whenever you click the View fax button on the fax cabinet etc, this is the viewer that will always be used to display the faxes by NetCFax. Access to our own thumbs viewer is not effected by this.

WARNING - After annotating or otherwise modifying a received (or other) fax, you MAY still need to use the viewers Print option to send it to the NetCFax Printer to ensure it is in the correct CCITT3 Class F TIF format, although the Able product does appears to handle this internally in our (brief) own testing.

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