Phone numbers in a Long Text Field

[John_Dlouhy]

Greetings Airtable Community

I have a long text field with RTF formatting enabled. The text includes links to web pages, emails, and phone numbers. The web links are working perfectly, as are the email links (using mailto:)—but the phone numbers are not working.

When formatting the phone numbers, I did the following:

1) Highlighted the phone number
2) Clicked on the link icon
3) Entered tel: and the number (+3606500000)

But when I click on the link, I see that the system has inserted 'http://' in front of tel: and this takes me to a "can't open the page" error instead of initiating a phone call. The system hasn't inserted 'http://' in front mailto:

Thanks in advance for suggesting a solution! 🙏🏽

[Saravanan_009 · Accepted solution]

It sounds like Airtable is automatically adding http:// to any link that doesn't start with a recognized protocol like mailto:. Unfortunately, Airtable's RTF editor doesn't natively support the tel: protocol, which is why it's not behaving as expected.

Here are a couple of workarounds you might consider:

Use a Button Field: You can create a button field that opens the phone number link using the tel: protocol. The button field has a 'Phone number' option that you can use to dial directly if you're on a device that supports phone calls.

Use a Plain Text Field: If RTF formatting isn't critical, consider using a plain text field and manually entering tel:+3606500000. This way, it might be recognized correctly by devices that interpret phone numbers.

External Links or Scripts: If you're open to using external tools, you could create a script or use a third-party service like Zapier to automate the phone number linking process more effectively.

These workarounds might help you achieve the desired functionality in Airtable.

[DisraeliGears01]

Trying to accomplish what you seem to be doing, what if you replaced the RTF field with an attachment field to include a doc with the properly formatted text? From the example provided, this solution isn't as elegant, but might accommodate your use case. Students are already copying/pasting into a separate document judging by the "Delete this in X circumstance" components. 

Also, just have to say, it's strange coincidence seeing this post, because I'm typing from Bellingham myself. More than one power user in town 🤣

[John_Dlouhy]

Thank you for these great suggestions! I will explore which workaround does the job!

[John_Dlouhy]

Go BHAM!! Thanks for the suggestion—it’s an interesting idea, one that I’ll definitely keep in mind as I sort through this issue. Cheers and thanks again!