The three things you need for knowing how to fax France are:
- Your international dialing prefix (it is “011” in the United States)
- The country code for France (it is “33”)
- The fax number in France you want to reach
In order to send a fax to France, you must put this dialing string into your machine:
011-33-[the number you want to send a fax to in France]
( 33 ) is the country code for France and people in the U.S. dial “011” to reach international lines. Be sure to prefix with a “9” if you normally need one to access a line outside of your company’s phone switch/network.
If your machine is faster than the international circuit, you may need to insert a pause into the dialing sequence after the “011” to allow the phone network time to connect you to an exchange. This differs by model and make of fax machine, but may be a comma or “#” sign inserted between the numbers.
If you receive a bad connection or the fax does not begin transferring, try reducing the baud rate on your machine to ensure a noise free connection. You can try 9600 as a stable baud rate, however, know that the lower you set the rate, the slower your fax will transmit. This could increase long-distance calling charges.
Another Way to Do Business
If you send and receive faxes regularly, you may want to look into online faxing services such as eFax or iFax. Both offer free trials or very inexpensive online faxing.
To send a fax to France using email, you’ll essentially attach the document (PDF is common) to the email as you normally would, but the addressee will be the fax number in France followed by a special domain provided by the online faxing service.
On the other end, your fax will still appear as if it came from a regular fax machine.
