Do you have a fax machine? Have you ever wanted to test it to determine that it’s working? Perhaps a colleague or a friend indicated that he or she was unable to fax you. GotFreeFax is an easy way you can send a fax to your own fax machine. Here are instructions for using it.
- Visit https://www.gotfreefax.com [Note: GotFreeFax offers both free and paid versions of their service. Of course, there are limits to the free version. You’re permitted to send a maximum of two, 3-page faxes per day.]
- Locate the Sender Info section and enter, at a minimum, your name and a valid email address. A valid email address is required since GotFreeFax will send you an email containing a link that you need to click to trigger the sending of your fax.
- In the Receiver Info section enter, at a minimum, the recipient’s name and fax number.
- In the Fax Content section you can type a short message or you could attach a file.
- In the Free section, click the “Send Free Fax Now!” button.
- Check your email account. In a minute or two you will get an email from GotFreeFax. Click the link in that email to trigger the sending of your fax.
- Wait a couple of minutes. Your fax machine should receive your fax and print it out, if everything is working.
- Check your email account again. You will get another email from GotFreeFax containing a status report–whether or not they were able to successfully send the fax message.
I used this program to test my fax machine and now every time my phone rings it goes to the fax machine, how can I stop this from happening as my phone and fax are o n the same line
Hi Donna,
I can think of a couple of possible solutions. You could check your fax machine’s settings for when it answers. Typically, one can configure the fax machine to answer after X rings. Increase this number so your phone is able to answer incoming calls. Alternatively, you could decrease the number of rings that your phone waits before it answers a call.
However, you have a small challenge on your hands since you’re asking two devices, the fax and the phone, to share one phone line. Since one device will always be configured to answer before the other device, then this other device will never be able to answer the phone. Thus, the elegant solution is to see if your phone company offers a service called distinctive ring. A distinctive ring might be a double ring. Then, you’d configure your fax to answer the phone only when it detects this distinctive ring, assuming it has this feature. If either your phone company doesn’t offer this service or your fax machine can’t be configured appropriately then your solution is to get a second phone line and dedicate it to the fax machine.
Set Auto Answer on FAX machine to off.