You have just read some dreaded words in an email or heard them on a phone call: we are going to need you to send that to us by fax. You don’t have a fax machine, and now you’re frantically looking for a way to send a fax without having to go stand in line at the local library or office supply store. We have the answer: you can send a fax online with Gmail, easily.
Test Drive Our #1 Recommended Choice and Fax Free for 30
Send a Fax Online From Gmail in Minutes
Who has a fax machine these days? Very few of us, and even if you are maintaining a landline just to dedicate to your fax machine and keeping up with fax machine maintenance, it’s probably time to ditch this ancient tech and go modern. Here’s how it works:
Find an Online Fax Service Provider
The first step is to find an online fax service provider. You can’t just fax directly from your Gmail account because Gmail uses the Internet to transmit data, and faxing protocols require that faxes be sent over regular telephone lines. A fax service provider will receive your documents and transmit them according to the proper requirements.
Your fax will arrive at your recipient’s machine exactly as if you had sent it from a regular fax machine. Once you have signed up with your service provider, you just link your Gmail account, and you’re ready to go. If you want, you can send an email directly from your service provider’s website or app. However, if you link up your email, sending a fax becomes just as simple and intuitive as sending an email.
Compose and Address an Email
Your next step is to open up your email account and compose a new email. This is done exactly as if you were sending an email. In place of a regular email address, you will put your recipient’s phone number and the suffix provided to you by your Internet fax service provider. Just add in the numbers of your recipients fax machine without any special characters or spaces. To send a fax in the United States, it would look something like this:
8882223333@rcfax.com
If you’re sending an international fax, you’ll add the country code and the area code, if any, for the region where your recipient lives. So, for example, if your recipient is located in Great Britain, the number they sent you will probably look something like this: +44 20 8777 2344. The first two numbers are the country code for the UK, and 20 is the area code for London. When you put this into the address line of your email, it will look like this:
442087772344@rcfax.com
Compose a Cover Letter and Attach Documents
Here’s the important thing to remember when you’re faxing from the email: nothing at all should go into the email body itself. Nothing in the body will get sent. Your cover letter goes into the subject line, and the documents you were actually faxing should be attached.
If you have trouble composing a good cover letter within the constraints of the subject line view, just compose the letter within the email body and then cut and paste it into your subject line. You can attach documents from your computer or attach them from your Google Drive, Dropbox, or other document storage system. The best type of document to send by Gmail is PDF.
And that’s it! You’re ready to go, and you’ve just sent a fax by Gmail in mere moments. Ready to get started? Test Drive Our #1 Recommended Choice and Fax Free for 30 days!