Hello,
Someone asked me to incorporated the auto-formatting function such as it exists in Outlook Contacts.
Has anybody have any experience with this? - anything I should look for when writing a procedure like this…or has anybody wrote this already and would like to share the code for this.
Thanks in advance!
This is somewhat of a contentious issue. What country are you in? And do you have any contacts that are in a different country?
I had a Danish developer working for me, and one day I went into our internal Navision system, and found that every telephone number had been re formated to a number like +1 21 25 55 12 34 the original number was say 212 555 1234. But apparently in Denmark telephone numbers are always grouped in 2s, so surely the rest of the world does that also… right?
As an MVP, I have contact information with Microsoft, but since I got my MVP award in the US, but I am Australian, living in the Czech republic, its impossible for me to give them my telephone number. It just gives a message “the Telephone number is not correct”, even though I am entering my correct number.
In the US this will work, because all phone numbers are 1 (both International code, AND the long distance dialing code), 3 digit Area code, 3 digit exchange code and a 4 digit telephone number. But how would it be if you did this for the UK, where they change the format of area codes every few years. First London is 1, then its 7 then its 17 then its 171 then its 207 and sometimes local numbers need the area code, sometimes they don’t. What do you do each time a country changes its format?
I suggest sit with the client and rethink this. If Microsoft can’t make it work internationally, I don’t think you are going to make it work.
The only suggestion I would have, is that when the user enters the country code, have a field displayed next tot he Phone Number field that hits them what the number should look like. ANd don’t foget that some countries handle cell phone numbers differently.
Recommendation: skip this and get on with the real stuff. Sorry [:D]