Event 32079 Faxing

Previous posts (and replies from Microsoft) have implied this error
only results from hardware/driver incompatibilities between XP and the
Fax Modem in use. i.e "Blame Somebody Else"

This is not true - you can also get this error simply by specifying a
phone number with + at the start, e.g. the commonly accepted notation
for international numbers such as +33 (france), +44 (UK)

If the recipient number starts +33 the fax immediately fails with no
explanation other than Critical Error and an Event in the Event log of
32079.

Presumably this is typical shoddy programming by Microsoft for a) not
accepting a common international standard for specifying international
dialing codes and b) not logging the error correctly with a useful
reason for the user or validating the input when the user specifies the
number and stating it cannot be entered in that format.

So the solution is to instead specify the number as 00 instead of the +
character.

I wonder how much money in lost productivity is caused by this bug
world wide.

This is mentioned in an article on the MS website. It isn't mentioned
in the help for MS Fax recipients when setting up the numbers:

"Very Important: Telephone numbers must be in the canonical form in
which a U.S. number would appear as +1 (626) 555-1212. If you use even
a slightly different form such as (626) 555-1212 or 1-626-555-1212, the
dialing rules won't be applied and the fax transmission will fail."

But +33 for France wont work - use 0033!