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, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...
and included in the Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate
Windows Vista editions
Windows Vista—a major release of the Microsoft Microsoft Windows, Windows operating system—was available in six different product editions: Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate. On September 5, 2006, Microsoft ...
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 successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
; 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 Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...
,
Windows 8
Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012, made available for download via Microsoft ...
,
Windows 10
Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...
(x86/x64) and
Windows 11
Windows 11 is a version of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, released on October 5, 2021, as the successor to Windows 10 (2015). It is available as a free upgrade for devices running Windows 10 that meet the #System requirements, Windo ...
(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 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 successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
. 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
The Democratic Movement (, ; MoDem ) is a centre to centre-right political party in France, whose main ideological trends are liberalism and Christian democracy, and that is characterised by a strong pro-Europeanist stance. MoDem was establis ...
or a shared fax server account to use a
network fax server. The Windows Fax and Scan software is not an
internet fax
The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...
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 fro ...
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, 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