How to send a fax

To send a fax, load your pages face up in the document feeder, dial the number as you would on a phone, and press Start. Without a fax machine, a fax website such as faxfair.com, a phone app, or a store or library machine can send it for you.

Send a fax from a fax machine or all-in-one printer

Brother's manual for the MFC-L2750DW and Canon's manual for the TR8600 series show how to fax a document in the same order. Where the button names differ, we give both.

1. Load your pages Put them face up, top edge first, in the document feeder, or put one page face down on the glass. Take out staples and paper clips first.
2. Switch to fax mode Press Fax on the control panel, or select FAX on the touchscreen's home screen.
3. Enter the fax number Type it with the area code, plus any 1, 9 or 011 the call needs. You can also pick a saved number from the address book.
4. Press Start Brother calls the button Fax Start. On a Canon, tap Black, or Color only if the other office's machine can take color.
5. Add pages from the glass If you're using the glass, the machine asks after each page whether there's another. Put the next page down and choose Yes on a Brother or Scan on a Canon, and after the last page choose No or Send now.
6. Check the report Look for OK next to RESULT on the transmission report. If you need it as proof, make sure your machine prints one after every fax.

Canon warns that one wrong digit can send your fax to the wrong place, so for important papers it suggests calling the person first. To cancel a fax that's still scanning or sending, tap Stop on a Canon or press the stop icon on a Brother.

Before your first fax, enter your fax number, phone number and name in the machine. Brother calls this the Station ID and prints it, with the date and time, at the top of each fax you send. On the MFC-L2750DW, it's under Settings, All Settings, Initial Setup, Station ID.

Which way the page faces in the feeder and on the glass

The document feeder takes your pages face up, and the glass takes them face down. The three manuals we checked agree.

If the other office says your fax came through blank, that can mean the pages went in the wrong way up. Brother's troubleshooting page points to how the pages were loaded when sent faxes are blank.

Use one or the other, not both. Brother says the feeder must be empty before you use the glass, and Canon says to take any page off the glass before you use the feeder. Put curled, folded, torn or taped pages on the glass one at a time, because Brother says not to send them through the feeder.

The digits to dial for U.S., office and overseas numbers

A fax machine dials like a phone on the same line, so type the digits you'd use to call that number.

• For a long-distance number in the U.S. or Canada, dial 1, the area code and the number. Frontier, a phone company, gives that order for long-distance calls, and the FCC gives it for calls to Canada and most Caribbean nations.
• For a local number, the area code and the number are usually enough. In some California and Illinois area codes, Frontier says to dial 1 first even for local calls. Frontier also lists fax machines among the equipment to reprogram for 10-digit dialing, so add the area code to any 7-digit number saved in your machine.
• If your office phones need 9 for an outside line, put 9 first. On the MFC-L2750DW, Brother's Dial Prefix setting can add up to 5 digits before every number for you, under Settings, All Settings, Initial Setup, Dial Prefix. If you set it to 9, don't type the 9 yourself. If your printer is on an office phone system (a PBX), Canon says to follow that system's instructions.
• For another country, dial 011, the country code, then the number. That's the order in the FCC's tip sheet on international calls, and 011 is the U.S. code for calling abroad. When a number is written with a plus, such as +44 20 7946 0123, type 011 in place of the plus. The exception is +1, the code for the U.S., Canada and much of the Caribbean, which you dial as 1, the area code and the number.
• For a UK number written the British way, such as 020 7946 0123, leave off the 0 at the start. The Northern Ireland government's website, nidirect, tells people calling UK 08 and 03 numbers from abroad to drop the 0 and dial +44. In our example below, the same 0 comes off a London 020 number.

Some phone systems need a moment between digits, for example after the 9 for an outside line. That's what the pause key is for. Canon's touchscreen has a key that adds a P to the number, and on Epson's WorkForce WF-2650 the Redial/Pause button adds a dash.

Worked example

Both numbers are examples, not real fax lines. Ofcom, the UK regulator, recommends 020 7946 0000 to 0999 for TV and radio drama, and those numbers aren't allocated to phone companies. P is the pause key, and spaces are only there to make the digits easy to read.

Leave out the P if your office line connects without one.

Add a cover sheet as the first page

A cover sheet goes on top as page 1. It says who the fax is for, who sent it, how to reach you and how many pages to expect, counting the cover sheet, so a missing page gets noticed. You can fill one in and print it with our free fax cover sheet maker.

For medical records, our guide on how to fax medical records covers what HHS says about requests, fees and authorization forms.

Read the transmission report

The transmission report is the page your machine prints about a fax it sent. Brother calls it the Transmission Verification Report and says you can use it as proof that you sent a fax. OK next to RESULT means the fax went through, and NG means it didn't. Brother says an NG result is probably temporary noise or static on the line, so send the fax again.

Brother prints the report only when a fax fails unless you change the setting. To get one after every fax on the MFC-L2750DW, press Settings, then All Settings, Fax, Report Setting and Transmission, and choose On. On (+Image) also prints part of your first page, which shows which document went.

Our guide on how long it takes to send a fax shows what else the report lists and how to tell that a fax went through.

What to do when a fax fails

• If faxes keep failing, or your phone service runs over the internet (VoIP), slow the machine down. On Brother's MFC-L2750DW, set Compatibility to Basic (for VoIP), under Settings, All Settings, Initial Setup. It drops the modem to 9,600 bits per second.
• If the machine can't dial at all, check that the phone cord runs from the wall jack to the machine's LINE jack. Brother suggests pressing Hook in fax mode to listen for a dial tone. If dialing from the keypad still doesn't work, send it by hand. Press Hook, dial the number, wait to hear the fax tones, then press Fax Start.

For a busy line, no answer or an error code, see our guide on why a fax is not going through.

Other ways to send a fax

A fax website, a phone app, or the fax machine at a store or library can send the same pages. Our guide on how to fax without a fax machine compares the four ways, with their costs and limits.

On our website, faxfair.com, you upload PDFs or photos, type a U.S. or Canadian fax number and pay, with no account. As of November 2026, a fax of up to 40 pages costs $2.49, and one of 41 to 100 pages costs $6.99. We only charge your card when the fax is delivered. If the fax fails, we cancel the payment and you aren't charged. We send only to U.S. and Canadian numbers, so the London number above needs a fax machine or another service.

If there's no fax machine nearby, send it from this website. Upload your PDFs or photos and type the number, with no account. If your pages are still on paper, the FaxFair iPhone app scans them with the camera instead.

Send a fax online

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