Or even better, some global preferences including phone …

This is definitely something we plan on doing in the future.

For now, here’s some information on how our phone number field currently works. Basically, it’s a text field that has 3 differences from a regular single-line text field:

1. 
   

   If it’s a 10-digit phone number, we assume it’s a North American phone number and format it consistently as (xxx) xxx-xxxx. If it’s any other number, then we accept it but don’t format it. For you, as an Australian, if you just type in 10 digits (as your phone numbers are also 10 digits long), it’ll get automatically formatted as a US number. The way to get around this for now is to enter parentheses around the area code when you enter the data.

   
   


2. 
   

   You can tap on a phone number field while in a mobile app to make a phone call.

   
   


3. 
   

   If you filter by a phone number field, parentheses/dashes will be ignored and only the digits will be compared.

   
   

Many thanks Katherine. I had played with it and realised same as you have said. I figured I needed to formally put it in feature requests as if I did not, you might not think anyone cared! Love the product and the speed of delivery you guys are driving.

Yes please! I’d like to format UK phone numbers. I do use the phone field and it’s fine, but like Doug, I’d like to show I care!

I created a Form for users to enter data directly into one of our tables. If a user enters a string of 10 digits for the phone number, the Phone Number formatting is not applied.

User enters: 1234567890

Airtable maintains this as 1234567890 in the new record, whereas it should display as (123) 456-7890

Even if I manually touch and edit the new data in Airtable, it won’t display properly. It will only display properly if I delete the contents and re-enter it.

I did not test other display formats such as dates. Apologies if this has been reported before (I couldn’t find it if so).

Thank you.

+1 for this please, we have many international numbers and can make positive use of this immediately.

Thanks!

Keith

If you use with the country code it also works well.

Another up vote for this plese.

I’m in Australian where our mobile format is “xxxx-xxx-xxx”

Yes, this is so annoying. please european formats also, like you did with currency and date

Be aware that search will not find the phone number if the formatting is not included in the search the same way it was formatted in the field. It would be preferred if search ignored formatting.

In addition, it would be nice if this field could support raw US numbers containing “+1” that are copied & pasted into Airtable. For example, if I copy & paste +15555555555 from a CSV, I would like it to be formatted in a more readable format mperhaps “+1 (555) 555-5555” or “1-555-555-5555”] or have the option of selecting the display format like other field types provide.

+1 for this. Would be great to set our default formatting for phone numbers.

Australian here too

Also agreed re default formatting for international (especially Australian) phone numbers! Was wondering if there is an approximate ETA on this feature?

I’d like to support this request. French phone numbers are also 10-digit, but they are typically formatted by twos (01 23 45 67 89).

+1 also Belgian phone numbers (+32 xxx xx xx xx format) needed. Perhaps field formats can be updated in the settings page where you can choose your locale?

thanks

Bart

I support the need for international phone number and we too would love to have that. Yet, I believe there are better solutions than the one proposed above.

What not to do

1/ The format must not be defined at the field level, otherwise, in a contact table, we’ll need a field for US numbers, another for FR numbers, another for AU numbers…

2/ The format must make the phone number unique. Those days, people use more phone than email hence, phone makes more sense as a unique key than email. But phone is only unique with its prefix +1… for US, +33… for France, +65 for Singapore.

What the solution could look like

1/ Have a flag for prefix left to the local phone numbers. The gold standard is something similar to this: https://intl-tel-input.com/

2/ Can add some conditional logic for pre-selecting the flag: could be admin defined at base level or user level, could be user location, could be user local.

A customization of phone format exactly like you did for Dates is what I’d need. Thanks!

+1 from Spain we need to have a phone validation at least

Is this even on the roadmap? Originally posted request was 4.5 years ago?

This is an annoying issue that ignores your non-US customers.

Yes, I agree this is extremely frustrating. Airtable need to look at what happened at Evernote when they stopped listening to their customers. A long road back.

Would love this functionality please.

Looks like 4.5 years have passed and still no progress on this. Can we get an official update, please? @Katherine_Duh?

Hi! I perfectly agree! a proper field for phone number will be very useful.

So are you international company or local US startup? when can we expect this? thank you.

@Katherine_Duh Now, as the original poster, I have had 5 years of emails coming in from other loyal and enthusiastic customers of Airtable requesting what is, let’s be honest, a pretty basic requirement for an application that is sold to a global market. I have not seen one response from anyone at Airtable to these requests and I think all on this community would agree that is a pretty poor (no - unacceptable) situation and not at all what we expect from Airtable people. Can we please have some meaningful communication from you or someone with the authority to give us a clear statement of intent (or not) to this feature? Many thanks.