This page provides information to help you understand 
how to create faxable data files from your own data. 

A "faxable file" is simply an 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.

The TIF format is also probably the most complex format available on Windows PC's today, as it covers so many different internal formats.

Using the NetCFax FAX PRINTER
This is the normal way to create a faxable file.  

In most cases, all you need to do is to use the File - Print option in the application you are using, such as Word or Excel, and then select the NetCPlus fax printer.
        
Doing this allows almost any type of data to be converted quickly and easily into a faxable file (usually known as TIF or TIFF files).  These files can be a simple single page, or a large, multi page file. Please be aware that in many cases, only the applications that create the data know how to print it.  The only exceptions to this are standard ASCII text files, which NetCFax can convert for you internally.

Using Drag & Drop
    
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. 

In both the above situations, a window is usually displayed telling you what is happening, and this is also used to report any errors that may occur in the process.

If you do this with a complex PDF file, a special window is displayed, and what happens is that NetCFax tries to run Adobe Acrobat silently and makes it print the PDF to the NetCFax fax printer.  There is however one problem that can be caused by this (this only occurs with some versions of Acrobat) as Acrobat may not close itself down again after printing.  If this occurs, you will need to close it down manually by checking your task bar for the familiar Acrobat icon.  This is due to a bug in the Adobe Acrobat published interface, and is acknowledged by Adobe.

Using the SendTo context menu option
This is almost identical to the Drag and Drop functionality described above.

GENERAL INFORMATION
Unless the data you want to fax is in normal ASCII text (Notepad style text format) we really do recommend that in most cases, you run the relevant application and then simply print the data to the NetCFax printer, as this is by far the safest and surest way to create faxable data.  

If you have other types of image files, including possibly other types of TIF files, you can still send these to the NetCFax printer without problems.

When you print to the NetCFax printer, the default behavior is for a window to popup asking you to provide a meaningful name for this new TIF file.  This window also lets you chose whether you want to send that as a fax immediately, or to save it in what is called the faxable files folder, so that it can be sent later, either by itself, or together with other documents from that folder.

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