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Non US Phone formats needed


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  • Known Participant
  • 35 replies
  • March 25, 2021

I 100% agree. I’ve been following Doug’s post since early on, waiting with baited breath for this edit. I manage thousands of phone numbers, with different country formattings that need displaying in the one field. All i need is the what I assume to be simple change of adding custom formatting to phone number fields. Thanks


I cannot believe this feature is not available when so many other task managing apps and even relatively new entries to the market come with the option built-in. It is a fairly simple feature to add, and all it needs is the option to have the phone number formatted with country code (flag and number) plus the phone number. And allowing users to simply click or touch from any device to place a call.

Is there anyway to get these requests seen or have priority?


  • Participating Frequently
  • 6 replies
  • April 7, 2021

This is such a simple feature that would be so very useful! Can’t believe this has been ignored for so many years. Makes me wonder if Airtable listens to customers…


I hope we get a response from the Airtable staff, it is clear how in demand this feature is.


+1 for this feature to be added


Aristeidis_Zagk
Forum|alt.badge.img+16

this is really becoming…ridiculous. Products like coda.io have all these features, as standard.
European Format please


Forum|alt.badge.img+8
  • Participating Frequently
  • 6 replies
  • July 16, 2021
Gary_Brookes wrote:

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.


There are lots of U.S. customers that would like a built-in solution as well—we’re a music company that represents and works with composers, artists, and businesses from all over the world in addition to the U.S. Would LOVE if 35%+ of our contacts table numbers weren’t out-of-format.


Forum|alt.badge.img+5
  • Participating Frequently
  • 6 replies
  • August 11, 2021
Katherine_Duh wrote:

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.


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

The future is already in the past. Please provide some kind of an update so we don’t think we are being ignored.


Forum|alt.badge.img+4
  • New Participant
  • 1 reply
  • August 21, 2021

Hi! Is there any updates on this? It was initially logged in 2016!


Forum|alt.badge.img+4
  • Known Participant
  • 54 replies
  • September 6, 2021

+1 for Australia formatting support :slightly_smiling_face:


Real dissapointing to see that 6 years later the topic of non us phone number is still pending.


Forum|alt.badge.img+4
  • Participating Frequently
  • 6 replies
  • January 23, 2022

May I add my voice to this. It seems ridiculous not to have our (French) phones in a proper format, which may stop our softphone from calling a number in one click by the way.
On the fence about adopting Airtable now, but things like weeks starting only a Sunday and such phone formats may be what will make the solution look amateur in the eyes of the decision makers in spite of my efforts and demos.
If there are technical implications we do not see such as an impact on existing records (but being just a way to display the same infos I fail to see what), please advise and provide a roadmap ?
Thanks!,


Forum|alt.badge.img+4
  • Author
  • Participating Frequently
  • 7 replies
  • January 23, 2022
PMoby wrote:

May I add my voice to this. It seems ridiculous not to have our (French) phones in a proper format, which may stop our softphone from calling a number in one click by the way.
On the fence about adopting Airtable now, but things like weeks starting only a Sunday and such phone formats may be what will make the solution look amateur in the eyes of the decision makers in spite of my efforts and demos.
If there are technical implications we do not see such as an impact on existing records (but being just a way to display the same infos I fail to see what), please advise and provide a roadmap ?
Thanks!,


Yes it is pretty much unbelievable.

Doug Parke
Strathmore Farm and B&B

Mirboo North, Victoria 3871

E: dougparke@me.com
M: 0412 300 251
P: 03 5668 1980


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“Definitely do this” - Back in 2016.


  • New Participant
  • 1 reply
  • June 27, 2022

Yes +1 for this feature.
The problem is that i cant copy paste same format to other softwares/program.


Forum|alt.badge.img+2
  • Participating Frequently
  • 7 replies
  • September 19, 2022
Katherine_Duh wrote:

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.


I believe a good solution would be to have a personalization option instead of a country selector, since some people my want to choose to add +xx before the number, some other 00xx and this impacts on automatic insertion inside sheets in diffrent ways.
(atm i’m using it to ease input automation by inputting data from a form, having it elaborated through AirTable and the output is on a google sheet, and i get the resulting phone number with weird formatting, so i’ll resort to having the filed set as standard numbers format to try and sanitize the data in some way)


Agreed - need localised phone numbers ASAP please.


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As some said, it doesn’t have to be country selection I guess, but we do need this feature bad.


+1
And greetings from 2022


Katherine_Duh wrote:

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.


When using Airtable API this statement is not correct. The API requires me to search for phone number in the US formatting Airtable added. When I search for number only without special characters, no results are given.


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  • New Participant
  • 1 reply
  • August 7, 2023

Insane that you're not supporting international phone numbers. We need this!


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  • Participating Frequently
  • 7 replies
  • September 6, 2024

How is this not a feature in 2022, only 8 years later


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Hey airtable team - please add this to your roadmap. The phone number field is useless to us the way it works, even when I ask what country they live as a separate field and then do a fancy formula to map/cleanse, it doesn't work.

Lots of people in the world use **bleep**, and the country they identify with isn't always the country associated with their phone.


Forum|alt.badge.img+3
  • New Participant
  • 1 reply
  • January 21, 2025

Yep, not having the ability to format phone numbers for country localisation doesn't make sense to me.


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