Fax Forwarding: What it is and How it Works

Fax forwarding is a modern solution to manage your fax communications with ease and flexibility. It allows you to send faxes directly to an email address or another fax number, which makes it ideal for remote work, paperless offices and efficient document management in general. 

Here, you’ll learn what fax forwarding is, how it works and how to set it up for your business or personal needs.

What is Fax Forwarding?

Fax forwarding is the process of automatically redirecting incoming faxes to another destination, like an email address or a secondary fax number. This feature can eliminate the need to rely on a traditional fax machine and help make sure that you never miss an important document. This is true even when you’re away from your office.

By redirecting faxes automatically, fax forwarding helps assure seamless access to important communications without the constraints of being tied to a physical device. 

This is particularly beneficial for industries where efficient document handling is crucial like: 

• Legal
• Real estate
• Healthcare 

It allows you to maintain productivity and responsiveness, whether you’re in the office, working remotely, or traveling. When you convert incoming faxes into digital formats like PDFs, fax forwarding makes it easier to manage, store and share documents. 

Whether you’re working remotely or handling a high volume of faxes, forwarding can simplify communication and improve efficiency.

5 Key Benefits of Fax Forwarding to Email

Fax forwarding to email offers significant advantages for businesses and individuals. It’s more than just a convenience—it’s a powerful tool to modernize your communication processes while you boost productivity and reduce operational costs.

From improved accessibility to reducing your environmental footprint, here’s how fax forwarding can streamline your workflow and improve operations.

1. Access Faxes Anywhere

When you forward faxes, you can still access them from any device that has an internet connection. Whether you’re in the office, working from home or traveling, this flexibility ensures that important documents are always within reach. 

Instead of being tied to a physical fax machine, you can manage your communications on the go, keeping you connected no matter where work takes you.

2. Save Time and Resources

Forwarding faxes to your email eliminates the need for manual handling of physical documents, such as printing or scanning. By digitizing the process, fax forwarding streamlines operations and helps you focus on more critical tasks.

This not only reduces the time spent managing faxes but, when your communications are forwarded to the email address, it can cut costs associated with maintaining traditional fax machines. You won’t necessarily have to pay for paper, toner and repairs. 

3. Streamline Document Management

Incoming faxes are automatically converted into digital formats like PDFs, when you forward faxes, and delivered directly to your email inbox. This makes organization, storage and retrieval of important documents much easier. 

You can save faxes in email folders or cloud storage alongside other correspondence to make sure your files are centralized and easily accessible when needed. 

4. Level Up Collaboration

Fax forwarding simplifies sharing important documents with colleagues, clients or partners. Instead of needing to make additional copies or manually distribute faxes, you can forward your email attachments as fax messages. 

This quick and efficient process improves collaboration, minimizes delays and helps you make sure everyone has the information they need when they need it.

5. Reduce Environmental Impact

Going digital with fax forwarding significantly lowers your reliance on paper, ink, and energy-intensive machines. By reducing waste and cutting down on resource consumption, you contribute to a more eco-friendly work environment. 

Fax forwarding aligns with sustainable business practices while saving costs and improving efficiency. For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to fax to email. 

The Working Process of Fax Forwarding to Email

Fax forwarding to email uses online fax services or multifunction printers to digitize and send faxes electronically. Faxes are received, converted, and delivered to your email. 

Here’s how it works:

• When someone sends a fax to your number, it’s processed by the forwarding system instead of being printed on a traditional fax machine.
• The system converts the incoming fax into a digital format, typically a PDF or TIFF file, that is easy to view and share electronically.
• The converted document is automatically forwarded to the email address linked to your fax account. You’ll receive the fax as an email attachment, ready to download, read, or forward.

This process helps you make sure you can access and manage your faxes from any device, providing flexibility and convenience.

Setting Up Fax Forwarding on a Multifunction Printer

If you’re using a multifunction printer with fax capabilities, you can often set up fax forwarding to email. You’ll need to access the printer settings, enter your email address, configure file format options then save and test the settings. 

Here’s how set up fax forwarding on a compatible printer:

1. Navigate to the printer’s menu and locate the fax settings. Look for the “Fax Forwarding” or “Email Forwarding” option.
2. Input the email address where you want incoming faxes to be forwarded. Some printers allow you to add multiple email addresses for additional recipients.
3. Select the desired file format for forwarded faxes, such as PDF or TIFF. This will help make sure your faxes are compatible with your devices and systems.
4. Save your changes and perform a test fax to confirm that forwarded documents are delivered correctly to your email inbox.

While this setup works well for many users, an online fax service like eFax can provide additional features, including mobile access, cloud integration and automatic archiving.

To explore what you can get with an account, explore eFax’s suite of features. 

eFax: A Cost-Effective Way to Forward Faxes

With eFax, forwarding faxes to your email is simple and efficient. You can enjoy automatic delivery to email, access on any device, lifetime storage, eco-friendly communication and a user-friendly interface.

Here’s how it works:

• Incoming faxes are automatically converted into digital files and delivered directly to your email inbox as attachments.
• Whether you’re using a smartphone, tablet, or computer, you can access forwarded faxes from anywhere.
• eFax provides lifetime storage for your faxes, which can help you make sure important documents are always accessible.
• By eliminating paper and energy-intensive fax machines, eFax helps reduce your environmental footprint.
• The intuitive platform makes it easy to set up and manage fax forwarding, even for users with no technical experience.

Switching to eFax offers a hassle-free solution to manage your faxes while saving time and money. Our fax forwarding can simplify your document management and boost productivity. 

To enjoy convenient, eco-friendly and flexible faxing solutions tailored to your needs, sign up with eFax today.