This page provides information to help you understand 
how easy it is to fax the data from almost any 
application on your PC with NetCFax

As we have already mentioned on other information pages, A "faxable file" is simply a monochrome image file in TIFF format (for the technically minded they are CCITT Group 3 compression to be precise) and all faxes are of course only black & white, as faxes cannot handle color in documents.  Even a gray scale image is NOT the same thing, and cannot be faxed unless it is converted to a Black & White image first.

Example of sending a Word document by fax to someone using NetCFax 

All you need to do is to load Word and open the document that you want to send out by fax. If you only want to send a part of that document, just highlight the required section in the normal way.  This information does in fact apply to most other applications also.

Because NetCFax needs to be involved in this process when it comes to naming the fax file that is created, PLEASE REMEMBER that NetCFax must be running (although the client does not need to be logged in to a server) before you can use the fax printer.

When all the data you want to fax is ready, and you want to actually create (and possibly send out immediately) the fax, just go the File Menu and select the Print option (NB - DO NOT use CTRL+P as most times this will automatically send the data you have selected, or the entire document to the default Windows Printer) which is not what you  want to happen in this case.

TIP - Both the Main fax client and the faxes cabinet windows also allow you to Drag & Drop files onto them to be sent to the fax printer.  This system allows you to select files in Windows Explorer and simply drop them on the fax cabinet to create faxable files.
  
You can however, normally only use this to drop ASCII text files, TIF (faxable) files, or PDF files providing they are not too complex.  But, if the machine the fax client has the relevant applications installed and accessible, then you can usually drop Word, Excel and other types of data as NetCFax will attempt to shell the relevant program and have it print the data to the fax printer.
   
If the relevant application does not provide this ability, they will usually simply open with the selected file loaded, and you can then print it to the fax printer manually to create a fax from the file. 

IF YOU ARE RUNNING A FAX CLIENT IN A REMOTE DESKTOP SESSION :-

This means you are running a fax client that is installed on a Windows "Server" system, such as Windows 2000 or 2003 Server. It does NOT apply to Windows XP Pro using Fast Task Switching.

Clicking the Print option will display the standard Windows "Select a Printer" dialog, and in there you will find a fax printer driver named NetCFax REMOTE DESKTOP Printer. Just select this printer and click the Print button.  DO NOT use the "NetCPlus fax client printer" in this environment, as it will NOT WORK.

This will make the application such as Word etc send (or rather print) all the selected data to our printer driver. This will convert it quickly and easily into a faxable file (usually known as TIF or TIFF files).  The files created may be a simple single page, or a large, multi page file. 

Once the printer has created the faxable TIF file, it DOES NOT notify NetCFax so it cannot display the initial fax creation window.  The file will be created and saved with a unique default name in the normal faxable files folder, so all you need to do is to click the "Create a fax" button, and then use the "Select Fax" to add it to your list of data to be faxed.

ELSE :-

Clicking the Print option will display the standard Windows "Select a Printer" dialog, and in there you will find a fax printer driver named NetCPlus Fax Server Printer if you are working on the fax server machine, or NetCPlus Fax Client Printer if you are using a fax client. Just select this printer and click the Print button.  If your locale does NOT use LETTER format paper, and you didn't change this to the correct paper size when the fax printer was first installed, you may also need to go into the properties of the fax printer and change the paper size to the correct one (such as A4) for your part of the world. 

This will make the application such as Word etc send (or rather print) all the selected data to our printer driver. This will convert it quickly and easily into a faxable file (usually known as TIF or TIFF files).  The files created may be a simple single page, or a large, multi page file. 

Once the printer has created the faxable TIF file, it will notify NetCFax and it will display the initial fax creation window, with the new fax already listed for inclusion.  Depending on the default setting you may have in your fax client, it may be the windows that asks you to enter a meaningful name for the fax, or the first of the two normal fax creation windows.  If you use the normal default then you can chose to just save the new fax data locally so that it can be faxed off at a later time, perhaps with other documents included with it, or you can go ahead and send the fax immediately.

GENERAL

NetCFax cannot provide support for the Drag & Drop of these types of files from Windows Explorer, because complex data such as that created by Microsoft Word, Excel, and many other similar applications MUST be converted to a faxable file format using the fax printer.  

However, you can Drag & Drop standard text files which usually have file suffixes such as .TXT .DAT .INI and others. In fact the Drag & Drop system in NetCFax provides special support to let you drop the (alternative) Microsoft Word format files that have .RTF suffixes.  Therefore, if you save your Word files in RTF format rather than the normal DOC format, you can then use Drag & Drop to create faxable files from these files.

The information above applies to sending Acrobat PDF files, Microsoft Excel data and indeed the data from most other applications such as accounting systems and others.

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