I had a Client and Realtor who had trouble printing a 26mb PDF report I sent out.
Then…
I broke it down into 4 smaller parts and sent it in PDF and DOC format and
they still could not print it. This was the first time I have run into this problem.
They wanted it faxed to them ASAP.
I was on the road with only my wireless laptop and I hate fax machines…
So I found a service online that would send them a fax from my computer to
their fax machine. I again broke it down into 4 smaller PDF files and it
went through their fax machine without a problem.
So I now have a nice new service I can use on the road, if I am away from
my regular phone lines and need to send a fax via my wireless internet connection.
And… if you want to… you can throw out your fax machine.
Check it out… plans start at less than $5.00 a month and you can send and receive
faxes via email or online web page. Its always good to have a back up system.
My clients had no problem downloading the file, but they could not
print it for some reason. The realtor had a problem opening the file.
Sometimes people’s hardware does not stay up to date and they
want you to FAX it to them (stone age). This is why I had to find
the online fax service.
I’ve been using www.yousendit.com for several years when I have a large file that the client’s ISP or e-mail server won’t accept. This doesn’t happen to me very often but when it does www.yousendit.com has saved the day for me. I put it up there with www.echosign.com as far as a useful tool. I use echosign to get all of my out of town/country client’s service agreements signed prior to the inspection.
As Michael stated, many people can’t receive large files via email.
I’ve never owned a “fax” machine, but I send faxes quite often through a fax-driver installed via my HP printer. This allows me to fax something without printing it out first.
TrustFax probably works great if you’re in a pinch, but I don’t remember ever needing the ability to fax “on the fly.”
BTW - why was your file so large? My report files are rarely larger than 2MB, and the one I got from you was about 1.5MB. Have you changed your system?
John likes lots of pictures!! I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything above 5 megs personally and there are a ton of reports on our server. The average is about 1 meg!
John you might want to run those pdf’s through a compression program first.
By the way, I’ve used eFax.com for awhile as they give me a fax number that people can send stuff too as well and I receive it via email.
All but two of my reports last quarter were under 1MB in size, largest was under 2MB. Most have more then 30 photos and run in the 20 something pages. primoPDF is a great tool for creating reasonably sized pdf files. BTW, the smallest the doc file (before I converted it to a pdf) was over 2MB, so it does a good job shrinking things down.
Yes, sending large emails can be a problem, that’s why I don’t send my reports via email, I post them on my website, then I send an email with a link to the report, less then 10k in size.
www.efax.com does work great. Used it during Katrina, very nice and reasonably priced. Since then I’ve come back to the home base, where if I have to send a fax, I use my all in one fax machine, free since all LD calls are already paid for.
If you have a website then you already have the capability…FTP download. Upload the file to your site…make a page just for this. Then post the link. Email link to whoever and bada bing its done.
Need to password it? Simple ADOBE (PDF) will do passwords, just use the security feature. Word does to.
I use homegauge so its not a issue. I do however send some clients all photos taken and those files can be huge. You must ZIP the file make it FTP and user friendly.
The size of your report can have a lot to do with the “size” of your pictures. If you use an 8 mega pixel size with 20 pictures it could be a 20MB report. If you cut that down to 2MP or VGA setting, if your camera has that option, it will reduce the report size dramatically to an easier e-mail format.
Now that I think back about it. I had to go into the PDF file at the last
minute and make a little chagne with a special editor program. That
program may have added a lot of MB after it reformatted it into its
original PDF state.
John I thought you were just a primitive caveman after your comment on my last post.
Re: Yet more technology (this is cool)
When they create a phone that will send me free money, call me.
Any way ,I use a broadband fax machine by sharp that that sends fax to email and visa versa,so that you do not need to print anything.
Bought it when first introduced a year ago.
Picked it up at Staples for about $150.
