Faxfilter

July 10, 2006 7:07 AM

I need to send out a fax to about 130 advertising contacts and am looking for either troubleshooting tips or recommendations for faxing software (Mac.)

Using the office's main fax line isn't an option—I have to fax this from my Mac. Both Faxstf 10.7 and the PDF to Fax feature built into OS X 10.4 leave much to be desired, unless I'm doing it all wrong. I imported the fax numbers from a database in Filemaker 8 and then created a group in the Mac OS X Address Book. Unless I have either Faxstf or the Fax preferences in OS X (or both) set up wrong, I can't figure out to fax to that entire group without manually entering in all the numbers, separated by commas. FaxSTF doesn't seem to want to send a test fax to our office's main fax number, and in Word I can't drag anything from the Address Book over to the To: field.

posted by emelenjr to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

I would use faxaway.com - make everything into a pdf and then email to [e-mail]

works great for me!
posted by thilmony at 9:10 AM on July 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

In the versions of FaxSTF I'm familiar with (all, admittedly, old, and pre-OS/X), you could build a group by drag-and-dropping numbers from your directory.

There's no way to do that in yours?

Is this a one-time faxout?
posted by baylink at 12:57 PM on July 10, 2006

Response by poster: I wasn't clear enough in that question. I've built a group of contact numbers in FaxSTF, too, but at the stage where I am right now I can't even get FaxSTF to dial my office's main fax number successfully (dialing 9, pausing, and the number sans area code.) The company's online support hasn't been too helpful, either, even in one-on-one consultation with the support staff. Fortunately, I don't have to send this fax out until the 17th.

It's not a one-time faxout, either, but something I'll have to do regularly to give various advertisers a heads-up on what's coming in the next issue of one of the magazines I work on. The managing editor I replaced had a routine down, and I'm following her instructions, but they haven't worked since I had to do some serious maintenance on this machine—which involved wiping the drive and reinstalling everything I needed.

Thanks for the tip about the online service, thilmony. I'll keep that in mind.
posted by emelenjr at 1:16 PM on July 10, 2006

If you've got that many faxes to send regularly, you should probably check out a fax broadcast service like JBlast. The only problem I see is that they'll probably want the addresses in Excel or CSV format, so Address Book isn't going to be that helpful. However, you can export CSV straight from Filemaker.
posted by boaz at 3:14 PM on July 10, 2006

Response by poster: Huh, that one looks interesting too. I may have to consult with the higher-ups and see if I can Save The Company Money by doing that instead of tying up one of our phone lines for a couple hours. At this point, I'm ready to abandon the current way of doing things before I even have to start. But I did just spend the money to upgrade to the latest version of FaxSTF... I might be stuck with that for a while.

Excel and CSV formats are no problem... CSV is how I got all the contacts into the Address Book in the first place.

Thanks for the suggestions. Keep them coming...
posted by emelenjr at 7:37 PM on July 10, 2006

Response by poster: Actually, don't keep them coming anymore. I figured out the issue. Apparently the phone line for my fax modem (separate from my office phone extension) is a direct line, not an office extension itself. I had my fax modem dialing 9 to get an outside line first, and it turns out I didn't need to. Problem solved. Thanks again for the suggestions about online faxing, though. It's not time to switch to a new way of doing things yet, but I'll keep it in mind.
posted by emelenjr at 12:03 PM on July 18, 2006