Frequently Asked Questions

The email address in the "Your details" section is not the one that is used to identify you. It is used to send you invoices and other notifications about your account. To change the email addresses from which emails are accepted for your account.

1. Login to your account
2. Click on preferences
3. Click on your UTBox fax number on the left
4. Make the changes and click update

UTBox recognises you by your email address. For this to work you need to either send your email using the same address that you signed up with, or add your address to your access list. Read on.

You can add your email addresses to the access list for your utbox.net account. To do this login to your account and click "Preferences" at the top of the page, then your UTBox fax number on the left. Then add your extra addresses to the text box saying "accept emails from these addresses".

We occasionally have a situation where our system has a large queue of emails to send, so that emails take a long time to get through the queue. But in our experience the problem is more likely to be with the email provider receiving the email. You might want to check with your email provider to see if their mail system is heavily loaded or in any separate spam folders you may have.

We have had a number of reports along these lines and the problem always turned out to be with some anti-spam software or system that incorrectly handles the email.

Try turning off the anti-spam software temporarily. If the anti-spam software is part of your organisation's network, talk to your system administrator.

Send an email to 'number'@fax.utbox.net
The number must include the country code and must only contain numbers. For example, to send to the number 02 8208 3200 in Sydney, Australia, send your email to 61282083200@fax.utbox.net (Note that for Australian numbers, the leading 0 in the area code is removed).
Do not put 0011 in front of international numbers you are trying to reach; begin with the country code.

UTBox fax numbers are available in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, Canberra and Adelaide.

Fax quality for outgoing faxes can be a problem when you are sending scanned documents if your scanner is not configured properly.

Set some of the settings for your scanner software;

1. make the image darker
2. use a black and white palette or duotone
3. use the "line art" setting, if your scanner has one.

Another possibility is if you login to your account under the preferences tab you are able to set the resolution of your sent faxes to a higher quality.

We do our best to make our system capable of converting all kinds of document, but for various technical reasons there are some documents that can't be converted. For example, Word documents containing macros may not convert properly or at all (our system disables them for security reasons).

If your document fails to convert there are three main solutions;

1. Try use PDFCreator and convert your document to a PDF before sending, Click here to download PDFCreator.
2. Try use the UTBox Printer Driver and print directly to fax; Click here to download the printer driver.
3. Try save the document in a different format before sending.

Our system will make 3 attempts to dial the number and send the fax over a period of about 15 minutes. After 3 failed attempts, it will give up and send you an email stating what went wrong.

Yes. The documents will be converted to fax pages and sent after the body of the email, in the order they are attached.

Currently utbox.net supports the following document types:

Document Type		Extension(s)
Microsoft Excel		.xls
Microsoft Word		.doc
Rich Text		.rtf
Microsoft PowerPoint		.ppt
Acrobat PDF		.pdf
TIFF images		.tif, .tiff
GIF images		.gif
JPEG images		.jpg, .jpeg
PNG images		.png
HTML		.htm, .html
Plain text		.txt

Received faxes are sent as an Acrobat PDF attachment by default. Using the member centre you can change your account preferences to have documents sent to you in TIFF or PNG format.

Yes. You can do this by having your office fax number forward all calls to your utbox.net fax number. Please be aware, however, that this will cost you in call forwarding charges from your phone provider.

No, you are only charged for faxes that are successfully and completely sent.

Prefix the number with "61". For example, to send a fax to 1300 136 011, Send your email to 611300136011@fax.utbox.net.

To redirect a duet fax line pickup your handset and enter: *11*3# (to choose fax line) then when hear tone *21 utbox fax number # (or to cancel #21#)

First check that you are sending to the correct number, and that the number is for a fax machine.
There are many reasons why a fax couldn't be sent. The phone line might have been busy at the time. Sometimes the fax machine at the other end will refuse to accept the fax for some reason, maybe because it is out of paper, or simply turned off. In any case, try sending the fax again at some other time.
If you find that you cannot send a fax to a certain number after several repeated attempts, contact us and let us know.

The fax will be stored in a queue on our system, and will be sent to you when you make your next payment. Faxes will be held in this manner for a maximum of 30 days.

Yes - since you sign up for the full service by "converting" your trial account to a full service, you keep your utbox.net trial account along with the fax number.

We will keep your number for 30 days after the expiration date. If you make a payment before that time, you will keep your number.

This problem may be due to your ISP blocking direct access to our mail system. Try the following procedure to have the printer driver use your ISP's mail system to send the faxes:

1. Click "Start" then "Settings" then "Printers".
2. Right-click the UTBox printer and select "Properties".
3. Click the "Ports" tab.
4. The "e2fax port" should already be selected If it isn't already, select it from the list. Click "Configure Port".
5. Enter your Internet Service Provider's outgoing mail server into the box labeled "Outgoing Mail Gateway".
6. Click "OK"
7. Click "Close".

Send an email to 'number'@sms.utbox.net.
As with sending faxes, the number must contain the country code and must only contain numbers. For example, to send to the mobile number 0418 112 233 in Australia, send your email to 61418112233@sms.utbox.net.
Put the actual message you wish to send in the first line of the email message.

To change the number your SMS is sent from, login to your account click on "Preferences" then click on "SMS Options". From here you can select the email address you want to set the number for. You can put any phone number or text string here. But keep in mind if you want to receive replies you should put your mobile phone number!

We will send up to 9 SMS messages joined together for a single email message. This is 1440 characters of text. Please note that each SMS message is 160 characters long and while you can send a long SMS message you are charged for each 160 characters that we send via SMS

By default your SMS is configured to send the text located in the body of the email, if there is no text there then you will receive this error message. Either put the text you want to send in the body of the email or configure your SMS message to be taken from the subject part of the email by clicking on preferences and then your number.

First you must upload a list of fax numbers to your broadcast address book. This is explained below.

Once your list is in your address book, the steps to start a broadcast are as follows:

• Click "Broadcasting" at the top of the web page, to go to the broadcasting section, if you are not already there
• Click "New Broadcast" on the left
• Select your document and the list(s) you wish to send to
• Check the other details on the form (they are pre-set to sensible defaults)
• Click "Next".

  After a while you will be shown some information about the broadcast, including the total number of fax destinations, the cost of the broadcast (the final cost will not exceed the values given) and a display of your document as it will look when faxed.

• Review the information given and click "start broadcast". Your broadcast will then be started.

You need to ensure your list is in the right format. Here are the rules:

• The list must be a "Comma-separated values" (CSV) file, also known as a "Comma-delimited" file. Files in this format can be saved from excel (select from the "Save as type" drop-down box)
• The very first row of the spreadsheet must name the columns.
• There must be at least a "Fax" column, which contains the actual fax numbers. The numbers must be the full international number (e.g. "+61 2 9123 4567") or (for Australian numbers only) at least start with the area code (e.g. "02 9123 4567). The number can contain spaces or parentheses or other punctuation marks.

If you also supply a "Name" column, the names in this column will be stored along with the fax numbers. This is not required but helps if you wish to keep track of individual faxes.

If you wish to make use of the mail merge facility, you can put any extra columns in the list and they will also be stored.

The process is the same as for normal broadcasting, but:

• The document supplied must be in Rich Text (RTF) format. This format can be saved from Microsoft Word by selecting it from the "Save as type" drop-down box in the "Save As" dialog box.

  We may provide support for normal Microsoft Word documents in the future.

• You insert merge fields into your document by inserting a special code. For example, for a field called FirstName:

  <mf:FirstName>

  The fields are case insensitive, and can use any name, as long as the name consists only of letters, numbers and underscores ("_").

• The fax list that you wish you upload for your broadcast must contain the fax merge data. For each merge field you use in your document, there must be a column in the spreadsheet with the same name.

Please note that a fax merge is charged differently from a normal broadcast. To check how much you are charged per page for a normal broadcast or a fax merge, click "Your Account" at the top and then "view details" next to your current plan, as listed on that page.

Whichever result of the following three situations is highest is the amount you will be charged:

1. The total cost of all of the successfully sent faxes
2. 50% of the cost of sending every fax (assuming they were all sent successfully)
3. $1.

You will be given an estimate for the cost of your broadcast before it is initiated.

Yes. For example, if you make a payment for 12 months of service and 6 months later you make a payment for another 12 months of service, your expiration period will be extended by 12 months, not 6. However, you can only accumulate a maximum of 2 years of service at one time.
For each payment you make, you have the term of that payment to use the credit. The credit will expire at the end of the term.

After your number expires you will no longer received faxes sent to that number. Instead, they will be put in a queue, where they are stored until you make a payment. When you make a payment, The faxes will then be sent to you.
The number, and any faxes sent to it, will be kept for you for 30 days after it expires.

No. When your service expires, any unused charges "expire" along with the service itself.

Depending on your method of payment there will be different delays. If you pay via direct deposit please be aware that it is necessary to receive the actual funds, match the payment to the correct account and then process the payment onto this account. This may take up to three working days.

Your credit lasts for the duration of the prepayment you make as per the table below;

1. 3 months - $19.95
2. 6 months - $34.95
3. 12 months - $59.95