Windows Fax and Scan is an integrated faxing and scanning application introduced in
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...
and included in the Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate
Windows Vista editions
Windows Vista—a major release of the Microsoft Windows operating system—was available in six different product editions: Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate. On September 5, 2006, Microsoft announced the USD p ...
as the replacement for the Fax Console of
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...
; it is available in all versions of
Windows 7
Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...
,
Windows 8
Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for download via MSDN and TechNet on August 15, 2012, and later to ...
,
Windows 10
Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...
(x86/x64) and
Windows 11
Windows 11 is the latest major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, released in October 2021. It is a free upgrade to its predecessor, Windows 10 (2015), and is available for any Windows 10 devices that meet the new Windows 11 ...
(x64),
but not on ARM64 versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11.
Windows Fax and Scan supports sending and receiving faxes, faxing or emailing scanned documents, and forwarding faxes as email attachments.
Features
With Windows Fax and Scan users with computers that have
fax modems can send and receive faxes, and fax scanned documents. Without a fax modem, users can email scanned documents and forward faxes as email attachments from their computer. WFS supports one-click scanning of documents from locally connected scanners, network-connected scanners and
multifunction
An MFP (multi-function product/printer/peripheral), multi-functional, all-in-one (AIO), or multi-function device (MFD), is an office machine which incorporates the functionality of multiple devices in one, so as to have a smaller footprint in a ...
devices. Even though this can be used for most types of documents, WFS is optimized for scanning, viewing and storing text documents.
WFS is available in Windows Vista Ultimate and as an optional component in Windows Vista Enterprise. WFS is not available on Vista Home Basic or Vista Home Premium. It is also available in all x86 and x64 versions of Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2012.
Faxing
The Fax View of WFS is an enhancement of the Fax Services component which was an installable option in the
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...
. New features include a fax account model, improved composition features, the ability to save faxes in composition as drafts, and a preview pane. It is also possible to right click on a file and send it as a fax. To send and receive faxes users can create either a local fax modem account to use a locally attached fax-capable
modem
A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by Modulation#Digital modulati ...
or a shared fax server account to use a
network
Network, networking and networked may refer to:
Science and technology
* Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects
* Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks
Mathematics ...
fax server
A fax server is a system installed in a local area network (LAN) server that allows computer users whose computers are attached to the LAN to send and receive fax messages.
Alternatively the term ''fax server'' is sometimes used to describe a pr ...
. The Windows Fax and Scan software is not an
internet fax
Internet fax, e-fax, or online fax is the use of the internet and internet protocols to send a fax (facsimile), rather than using a standard telephone connection and a fax machine. A distinguishing feature of Internet fax, compared to other Intern ...
application. Therefore, it must be used with an analog phone line.
Scanning
The Scan View of WFS has a
user interface
In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...
to manage scanned documents. It allows the creation, renaming and moving of folders from a single view. The preview pane shows documents scanned. Users can create profiles for particular scanners and save them for future scanning, and can directly route the scanned documents to their mailboxes after configuring the mail settings. The 'Fax from Scanner' feature allows directly faxing the document from the scanner.
Beyond the basic capabilities, is a step towards
Unified Messaging Unified messaging (or UM) is a business term for the integration of different electronic messaging and communications media ( e-mail, SMS, fax, voicemail, video messaging, etc.) technologies into a single interface, accessible from a variety of ...
, in bringing together the management of related media like faxes, emails, digital documents, etc.
See also
*
Microsoft Fax
References
Further reading
*
External links
Windows Vista: Faxing and Scanning''Windows Vista Features''; Microsoft.
{{Windows Components
Windows components