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Almost always, the sender loaded the page into the machine the wrong way around. Fax machines are picky about orientation: paper in the top feeder goes face up, while pages on the scanner glass go face down. Feed a page in backwards and every page lands on the recipient's end rotated 180 degrees.
| What the sender did | What the recipient sees |
|---|---|
| Loaded pages print-side down in the top feeder (ADF) | Blank pages, or nothing at all |
| Loaded pages print-side up on the scanner glass | Black or blank pages |
| Fed the page top-edge-last into the feeder | Every page rotated 180 degrees |
| Sent a two-sided original through a single-sided feeder | Only the first side arrives, possibly flipped |
For most HP, Brother, and Canon machines, the rule is simple: in the automatic document feeder (the top tray), the printed side faces up, and the top edge goes in first. This is the single most repeated answer in HP's support community, where the accepted solution on thread after thread is the same two lines: top feeder, print side up; scanner glass, print side down. The feeder pulls the top sheet first and scans it as it passes the read head, so if you stack the pages face down, the scanner reads the blank backs.
Check the tray itself before guessing. Many machines print a small diagram on the feeder showing a sheet with one corner folded, indicating which side should face up. It is easy to miss, and once you see it you never load a page wrong again.
The glass works the opposite way: place the original print side down. The reason is mechanical, not arbitrary. The scan head sits under the glass and looks upward, so the side you want scanned has to face it. Put a page face up on the glass and the head photographs the back of the paper.
This opposite-feeder, opposite-glass rule trips up everyone at least once, because it feels inconsistent. Remember it this way: the side being read always faces the reader. In the feeder, the reader is above the paper path. On the glass, the reader is below the glass.
No. A fax transmission carries the image of the page, but nothing in the call tells the receiving machine which way is up. The recipient's machine prints exactly what the sender's scanner saw, rotation included. There is no orientation flag in the fax handshake, so a page sent upside down arrives upside down, every time.
That also means you cannot diagnose the problem from the receiving end. An upside-down page looks identical whether the sender fed it top-edge-last or rotated the file on their computer. The fix always happens on the sender's side.
Send a one-page test first when the recipient matters. Many fax services and all-in-one machines let you fax to yourself, or to a friend's number, before the real send. Check the test page the way the recipient will see it: hold it up, read the first line, confirm it is right side up.
If you send the same document often, mark the stack. A small pencil arrow in the top corner of your originals, pointing toward the edge that goes in first, takes two seconds and survives photocopies of the cover sheet. And when you change machines, check the manual once: a few older models (and some high-speed office units) feed face down in the ADF, which is the exception that proves the rule.
Then you likely have two separate problems. Upside-down is orientation; cut-off text is usually a border or resolution mismatch between the sender's scan and the recipient's paper. Fix the loading direction first, then look at resolution settings or page edges if text is still missing at the edges.
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