Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual (Missing Manuals)

2017-07-07 02:10:07

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14.5. Faxing

It only took 19 years for faxing to become a built-in Mac OS feature. Sure, some Macs came with add-on faxing software like FAXstf. However, the faxing feature that debuted in Mac OS X 10.3, and has been seriously beefed up in 10.4, is Apple's first attempt at home-grown faxing software.

Using the Mac as a fax machine is a terrific idea, for a lot of reasons. It saves money on paper and fax cartridges, and may spare you the expense of buying a physical fax machine. Faxing from the Mac also eliminates the silly and costly ritual of printing something out just so that you can feed it into a fax machine. And because your fax originates directly from the heart of Mac OS X instead of being scanned by a crummy 200-dpi fax-machine scanner, it blesses your recipient with a great-looking document.

Here's the basic idea: When faxes come in, you can read them on the screen, opt to have them printed automatically, or even have them emailed to you so that you can get them wherever you are in the world. (Try that with a regular fax machine.) And sending a fax is even easier on a Mac than on a regular fax machine: You just use the File Print command, exactly like you're making a printout of the onscreen document.

Figure 14-6. When your Mac answers the fax line, there are three things it can do with the incoming fax. Option 1: Save it as a PDF file that you open with Preview. (The Mac proposes saving these files into the Users Shared Shared Faxes folder, but you can set up a more convenient folder.) Option 2: Email it to you, so you can get your faxes even when you're not home (and so you can forward the fax easily). Option 3: Print it out automatically just like a real fax machine.

There are only two downsides of using a Mac as a fax machine:

The Mac needs its own phone line . Otherwise, your Mac, answering each incoming call, will give friends and relatives a screaming earful when they try to call to express their love.

Of course, you can avoid that prerequisite by using your Mac exclusively for sending faxes, so that it doesn't answer the phone. Or if you need to receive the occasional fax, you could just turn on the fax-receiving feature only when somebody is about to send you a fax. Or you could buy an automated fax/voice splitter that sends voice lines to the phone and incoming faxes to the Mac.

But in general, the Mac-as-fax works best if it has its own line.

Figure 14-7. Top: This miniature version of the Address Book program is "look, don't touch." You can choose someone's name here by double-clicking, but you can't add a new person to the list. All phone numbers appear here, so look for those identified (in gray type) as fax numbers . (Chances are that the address book listing doesn't feature the 1- dialing long-distance prefix, which is why Apple gave you a separate Dialing Prefix box.) If you've built groups in your address book, you can send to everyone in a group at once. After you've double-clicked a fax number or group name, close the Address Book list.

Bottom: Fill in this dialog box in readiness to send a fax.

You can't fax from a book or magazine . The one big limitation of Mac-based faxing is that you can only transmit documents that are, in fact, on the computer . That pretty much rules out faxing notes scribbled on a legal pad, clippings from People magazine, and so on, unless you scan them in first.

14.5.1. Setting Up Faxing

Open System Preferences. Click Print & Fax. Click the Faxing tab.

If you intend to send faxes from the Mac, type in your return fax number. If you intend to receive faxes, turn on "Receive faxes on this computer." Then specify how you want to handle incoming faxes, as described in Figure 14-6.

Tip: If you're smart, you'll also turn on "Show fax status in menu bar." It installs a fax menulet that lets you monitor and control your fax sending and receiving.

14.5.2. Sending a Fax

When you're ready to send a fax, type up the document you want to send. Choose File Print. In the Print dialog box (Figure 14-3), open the PDF pop-up button and choose Fax PDF.

The dialog box shown in Figure 14-7 appears. Here are the boxes you can fill in:

To . If you like, you can simply type the fax number into the To box, exactly the way it should be dialed : 1-212-553-2999 , for example. You can send a single fax to more than one number by separating each with a comma and a space.

If you fax the same people often, though, you're better off adding their names and fax numbers to the Address Book (Chapter 20). That way, you can click the little silhouette button to the right of the To box and choose the recipient as shown in Figure 14-7, top.

Note: At this writing, the Address Book feature doesn't work when you're sending from Microsoft Word or Excel. You have to type in the fax number by hand.

Presets, Settings . Most of the time, fiddling with the lower pop-up menu, let alone saving your settings as a Preset, isn't relevant to sending a fax. (ColorSync? On a black-and-white fax? Get real!) But the standard printing controls are here for your convenience. You can use the Scheduler pane to specify a time for your outgoing fax, the Layout pane to print more than one "page" per sheet, and so on.

Use Cover Page, Subject, Message . If you turn on this checkbox, you're allowed to type a little message into the Subject and Message boxes.

Tip: In Tiger, you can safely press the Return key to create new paragraphs in your message. The Return no longer triggers the Fax button, as it did in previous Mac OS X versions.

Preview . This button opens your outgoing fax in Preview (Section 10.16), so you can see exactly what it will look like. (Don't miss the Soft Proof checkbox at the lower left. A better name for it would be, "Crummy preview," because it simulates the jagged, black-and-white look of an actual fax.)

Tip: Choosing File Save As at this point is your only chance to keep a copy of the fax you're sending.

Figure 14-8. Tiger gives you two sources of feedback on your faxing progress.

Top: the Fax menulet says "Dialing Connecting Sending " and so on; click to see the Hang Up Now command.

Bottom: In the Fax Log, the Active list shows the faxes that are currently sending or scheduled to go out later. The Completed list shows which documents you've successfully sent, and when they went out. You can't actually open the faxes, but at least you know they were successfully transmitted.

14.5.2.1. Sending

When everything looks good, hit the Fax button. Although it may look like nothing is happening, check your Dock, where the icon of a secret program called Internal Modem has appeared. If you click it, you'll see a clone of the dialog box shown in Figure 14-4, indicating the progress of your fax. Here you can pause the faxing, delete it, or hold it exactly as you would a printout. (Your Fax menulet, if you've installed it, also keeps you apprised of the fax's progress; see Figure 14-8.)

Otherwise, you don't get much feedback on the faxing process. Once the connection sounds are complete, you don't hear anything, see anything, or receive any notice that the fax was successful.

(If your fax was not successfully sent for some reason, the Internal Modem window automatically reschedules the fax to go out in five minutes.)

Tip: If you've set up a network, only one Mac has to be connected to a phone line. On that Mac, open System Preferences, click Sharing, and turn on Printer Sharing. From now on, other Macs on the network can send out faxes via the one that has a phone line! (They'll see the shared modem listed in the Fax dialog box.)

14.5.2.2. Checking the log, checking the queue

Apple, thank goodness, addressed one serious flaw in its faxing software. In Tiger, you now have a convenient log of all sent and received faxes.

To see it, you have to open Tiger's Fax List. Here are two ways to get there:

Open the Print & Fax pane of System Preferences. Click Faxing. Click Set Up Fax Modem. In the Fax List window, double-click Internal Modem.

In your Applications Utilities folder, open Printer Setup Utility. Choose View Show Fax List. Double-click Internal Modem.

Either way, you now get a status window that looks a lot like the one for a certain printer (Figure 14-8).

14.5.3. Receiving a Fax

A Mac that's been set up to answer calls does a very good impersonation of a fax machine. You don't even have to be logged in to get faxes, although the Mac does have to be turned on. In System Preferences Energy Saver, turn on "Wake when modem detects a ring" to prevent your Mac from being asleep at the big moment.

When a fax call comes in, the Mac answers it after the number of rings you've specified. Then it treats the incoming fax image in the way you've specified in System Preferences ”by sending it to your email program, printing it automatically, or just saving it as a PDF file in a folder that you've specified.