How to Send a Fax Directly from Gmail

Many people consider faxing obsolete. Who needs to send information using paper in this day and age? Well, there are certain instances where you’ll want to receive or send a hard copy of something. For example, if the recipient needs to sign the document or requires a filled-in form.

Although not too many companies and households have a fax machine these days, there are ways to send faxes in a modernized way. For example, you can use Gmail to fax someone directly.

Can You Send a Fax using Gmail?

Unfortunately, sending a fax directly from Gmail at standard settings isn’t possible. Google doesn’t have such a feature yet. However, you CAN use an online service to help you fax by email.

Signing Up for an Email-to-Fax Service

Fortunately, there are email-to-fax services that allow you to fax in Gmail. Once you’ve signed up for such a service and have set everything up correctly, you can enter a phone number inside a Gmail message and send the contents by fax to a fax machine.

You can find one of these services on Google, such as eFax. Most of them are pretty straightforward. Keep in mind, though, that these services aren’t entirely free. Sure, most of them will allow you to send several faxes free of charge, but after a while, you’ll get prompted to pay for a subscription or to purchase credits or tokens. On the other hand, some may offer free faxing but incorporate a company cover letter or add a watermark unless you pay for premium services.

Some Email-to-Fax Apps You Can Use

• eFax®
  
• RingCentral
  
• myfax®
  

Another important note: Regardless of the email-to-fax service you choose, you’re going to have to use the email address that you’ve signed up with to send faxes from Gmail. In other words, you’ll only be able to send faxes from the address that you used when signing up for the service.

Sending a Fax Directly from Gmail

Provided that you’ve signed up properly, it’s time to send your first fax. The problem with many email faxing services is that they don’t often offer a complete guide on how to send faxes from Gmail. Fortunately, you’ve found the correct instructions on how to do it. Here’s how.

1. Create a New Email Account in Gmail

Here’s how to create a new email, just in case you don’t know. Go to the Gmail homepage and sign in using your credentials. Then, on the main page and navigate to the upper-left corner of the screen. Select Compose. A new chat-like window will open in the lower-right corner of the screen. This section is where you enter all the delivery information and the contents of the fax message.

2. Enter the information

As you would type up any other email, you’re going to do it here just the same. However, in the Recipients field, you’re going to enter more specific information containing the recipient’s “fax number,” including the area code (without dashes).

You’re going to need to enter more information after that. Following the fax number, without a space, enter the fax provider’s “domain.” Your email-to-fax provider should provide this info.

The Recipients field should look something like this: 23235551234@domainname.com.

3. Add Content

Let’s start with the typical body of an email. This section is where you’re going to enter your cover letter. That means pretty much anything. Enter any information that you want. It can be a regular letter.

The actual content of a modern-day email-to-fax is in the attached files. Most providers allow sending DOC, PDF, JPG, and TXT files. You’ll find many other extensions available from provider to provider. To attach these files, select them and drag them over to the email’s body. Alternatively, select Attach files and choose the files you want to send in the window that pops up.

4. Send the Email

Once finished with adding all the content, typed-up or attached, it’s time to send the message. Make sure that you’ve entered all the correct information and that all the attachments are there. Feel free to add information to the Subject field in the email. You don’t have to, though.

Once you’ve double-checked everything, all you need to do to send the email to someone’s fax machine is to hit the “Send” button, just like sending a typical email.

The Benefits of Email-to-Fax

The main upshot to using an email to send faxes is, clearly, not having to get a fax machine or driving somewhere to use one. The one huge plus to using an email-to-fax service is accessibility. In this way, you can send content to someone else’s fax machine using your smartphone or tablet device.

As long as you use the Gmail that you’ve used to sign up for an email-to-fax service, you can use any device to send your faxes. That is a significant bridging of the gap between the new and the somewhat ancient methods of faxing.

Sending Faxes from Gmail

As you can see, using your Gmail to send actual faxes is possible. Sure, you won’t be able to do it natively from your Gmail account, but many email-to-fax services will enable you to do it. The actual fax composing process is as simple as sending any other email.

Did you manage to fax someone using your Gmail?