Outgoing faxes are illegible

[arbrus]

Office Jet 4650 scans, copies, prints fine.  Receives faxes fine.  But outgoing faxes are received illegibly.

[Dragon-Fur]

@arbrus 

Particularly if the fax is failing with just one recipient:

This might be saying more about the recipient's setup (fax, phone line, software, printer) than about your printer sending a fax.

There are a few things you can try / test on your side.

Read

•  Test Fax Setup with the HP Fax Test Service

Document provides help and links to other related documents, including:

HP Printers and Fax Machines - Resolving Fax Problems

In particular, read sections:

• Cannot send faxes

and

• Fax Quality is unsatisfactory

If you are using other than a traditional "landline" phone line,

If your phone line contains too much noise on the line (phone lines are intended to carry voice and too much noise can be bad news for carrying data),

If you are not using a two-wire phone cord,

The fax may - or may not - work as expected.

The User Guide provides just about everything that is available for setting up and using the Fax feature on your printer.

See

Chapter 5 - Fax - starting on Page 28

Chapter 9 - Solve a problem - Fax issues - Page 77

There are documents available in Category Troubleshooting > Topic Fax and in How-to > Topic Fax 

Reference and Resources – Places to find (more) help and learn about your Printer

Printer Homepage – “Things that are your printer”

Drivers / Software / Firmware Updates, Videos, Bulletins/Notices, How-to, Troubleshooting, User Guides, Product Information, more

HP OfficeJet 4650 All-in-One Printer series

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[arbrus]

It happened to 2 recipients this week; never before and nothing on my end had changed.  There is no problem sending; it just isn't legible.  I printed out HP instructions (very lengthy and involved) for improving fax quality and will follow them when I have a lot of time.

[Dragon-Fur]

@arbrus 

Understood.

The tests, of course, are limited in scope.  Intermittent failures might be harder to track down than would be a complete inability to use the service.

Once you have completed the Fax Quality steps, try another fax.

Data transfer can fail anywhere along the process.  Even assuming your own phone lines are sending the data, there may be other places the data can become mangled - other phone lines, for example, might be failing to send the data correctly (or completely).  You could try slowing the transmission speed.  References: User Guide ,  Resolving Fax Problems

You could also try sending a fax from the computer.  Doing so may - or likely not - make any difference since you do not know where in the process the data is being corrupted.  Reference:  How to Fax

Good Luck.

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