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Three causes explain almost every case: the document feeder pulled several pages at once so the machine thought it sent them all, the machine's memory filled up mid-job and it gave up, or the phone line dropped after the first page. The one test that tells them apart: send a single-page fax to the same number and see what happens.
| Test result | What it tells you | Next step |
|---|---|---|
| One-page fax goes through cleanly | The line and recipient are fine; your document is the problem | Fix the feeder or reduce the job size |
| One-page fax also fails after page one | The problem is the line or the receiving machine | Try a different destination or lower speed |
| One-page fax arrives blank or garbled | The scanner or the line is degrading the image | Print a copy on your own machine to isolate it |
This is the most common cause and the sneakiest, because the machine reports success. Worn pickup rollers grab two or three sheets at once, scan only the top one, and count all of them as sent. The recipient gets page one, and pages two and three were never scanned at all. Remove staples and paper clips, fan the stack to separate the sheets, and load fewer pages at a time. If the problem is chronic, the rollers are likely worn or glazed with paper dust, and cleaning them with a lint-free cloth often helps. Glossy or very thin paper is a frequent trigger even on healthy machines, so try plain paper copies of problem pages.
Many fax machines scan the whole document into memory before dialing. Older machines have small memory, and a multi-page job at fine resolution can fill it before the first page even transmits. When that happens, some machines send what they have and quietly stop. Two fixes work immediately: switch from fine or superfine resolution to standard, which shrinks each page, and split the job into smaller chunks. Deleting stored jobs, delayed faxes, and received faxes sitting in memory frees space too. If your machine has a memory percentage indicator, glance at it before a big job; anything already near full is a warning.
A fax call that disconnects after page one looks identical to a feeder problem from the sender's side. The difference is that the recipient's machine usually prints a partial page or logs an incomplete reception. Line drops are more likely on long-distance calls, on VoIP lines that were never designed for fax audio, and when call waiting beeps interrupt the tones (disable call waiting on the fax line if your carrier allows it). If the same document fails to the same number at different times of day but works to a different number, the line to that destination is the prime suspect, and lowering the transmission speed often gets the whole job through.
Make a plain photocopy of the document on the same machine. If the copy comes out clean, the scanner is fine and the fault lies in the feeder, the memory, or the line. If the copy is streaked, blank, or cut off, you have found your problem and no amount of redialing will fix it. One more isolation trick: place the pages on the flatbed glass one at a time instead of using the feeder. If flatbed scans transmit all pages, the feeder is the culprit and the rest of the machine is healthy.
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