Contacts: telephone numbers

Does anyone know of a 'canonical' format for contacts' telephone numbers that will survive import and export between various MS
applications in CSV - or any other - format? If I look up the topic on microsoft.com or MSDN, the only 'canonical' format I find is
a purely americocentric one [(nnn) nnn-nnnn or something similar, which means nothing to me in the UK].
My contacts are a motley collection from various sources including Outlook, Outlook Express, Messenger, my mobile phone, Skype and
so on, and there seems to be no uniformity. This makes nonsense of the Live Call option in WLMail.
--
Noel

Hi, Noel.

Maybe we can blame it on "Ma Bell", as we Yanks often referred to the
original AT&T, created by Alexander Graham Bell so long ago. In the
1960's - or was I the 50's? - AT&T introduced this new thing called "area
codes", along with DDD (Direct Distance Dialing - remember dials? on
phones?). For the first time, we could dial our own long-distance calls.
For calls to geographic areas other than our own, we had to also dial the
area code, but that was not necessary for calls within our own area. So the
prescribed format for a telephone number was to enclose the area code in
parentheses to separate it from the part of the number that always had to be
dialed: (512) 555-1212

I've not seen any "official" pronouncement of change, but I see that many
(most?) listings now are in the format: 512-555-1212.

To reach the DDD equipment, we have to dial a country code before the area
code, exchange and telephone number; the USA got the first country code. So
the whole number would be 11 digits: 1 (512) 555-1212, or 1-512-555-1212

But as with many other numbers (credit cards, US Social Security, and
probably many others that I don't even know about), the hyphens,
parentheses, spaces, etc., don't get dialed anyhow, so we could use simply:
15125551212 - but that's two hard for our human eyes to parse. :>(

But maybe we could have the computer store the number as digits-only, then
have each application format the number before displaying it to us.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@xxxxxx
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)

"Ildhund" <jnllb@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:OnijHFpOIHA.4740@xxxxxx

Thanks, RC. I think we still have area codes over here, but mobile phone numbers and VOIP put an end to any sort of uniformity in
that field (my VOIP phone appears to be located in Glasgow, about 600 miles away). Some applications will only recognize a string of
digits as a phone number if it begins with a "+" - which also serves to convince Excel (the standard application for opening CSV
files on a machine with Office installed) that this is a number, not text. Then, if you happen to live in a country with an unwieldy
country code (North America = 1, Madeira = 35191) and long phone numbers (my mobile phone number has 11 digits), Excel will stop
being able to recognize it as a number and start lopping bits off the end, which is not conducive to communication. If I omit the
"+", my local phone service provider will parse the first n digits of the number I dial to give a recognizable phone number. So, if
I dial 8521334567 to talk to Geoff in Hong Kong, I get connected to Mrs Postlethwaite in Chipping Sodbury whose number happens to be
852133.

So, to practicalities: WLMail (and all other MS or other applications regularly storing phone numbers) when exporting to CSV ought
to:
(a) if no 'area' code and/or IDC is specified, add the appropriate area code and International Dialling Code as indicated by the
Address fields
(b) add a "+" at the beginning
(c) remove any non-numeric characters (brackets, hyphens or spaces)
(d) enclose the field in quotation marks (" ") to indicate that the field is to be interpreted as text.

Then we might have a chance of being able to transfer contacts between applications without hassle.
--
Noel

"R. C. White" <rc@xxxxxx> wrote in message news:E264F05A-ABE6-4D4A-A5F0-02940843846B@xxxxxx