Understanding E-Mails and Faxes in Office

The capability to send e-mail and faxes directly from your Office applications enables you to quickly take the information on your screen and either fax it or e-mail it to a recipient. When you send an e-mail message directly from an Office application client, such as Word, Excel, Access, or PowerPoint, you are actually using your default e-mail client, such as Outlook, to send the message.

All the Office applications allow you to send the current document as an attachment. Word and Excel also provide the option of sending the document as part of the e-mail message.

There are two options for faxing documents from within an Office application. You can either send the fax using an Internet Fax Service, which allows you to actually fax the document over the Internet, or you can outfit your computer with a fax modem. Fax modems actually supply faxing capabilities as an extension of your computer's printing services.

Sign Up for an Internet Fax Service If you want to fax documents over the Internet, you need to sign up for an Internet Fax Service. Several Internet Fax Services exist, which not only allow you to fax information over the Internet but may also enable you to receive faxes over the Internet and have them sent to you as e-mail messages. The first time you attempt to use the Internet Fax Service to send a fax from a Microsoft Application, you are provided with the option of navigating to a Web page that lists Internet Fax Providers. The cost related to these services will vary.

Word makes the process of sending a fax easy and provides a Fax Wizard to walk you through the steps. The other Office applications send faxes in two different ways: either by "printing" to a fax modem or by using the Send To command on the File menu to send an Internet fax (Word also provides this option). Sending a fax from the Office applications via a fax modem is discussed later in the lesson.

To send a fax from any Office application using an Internet Fax Service, you click File , and then point at Send To . On the menu that appears, select Recipient Using Internet Fax Service . You can then complete the process by providing the recipient's fax number and other information required for a fax cover page.

Internet Fax Services provide their own cover page and set of instructions for sending a fax. The actual number of steps that you have to complete to send an Office document as a fax over the Internet depends on the actual service that you use.