While Outlook tries to make intelligent guesses when formatting phone numbers in its contact lists, often it ends up making the problem worse. Type in an Australian mobile phone number into the mobile field on a contact and Outlook will almost invariably try to separate out the initial (04) as an area code. Fortunately, there's a pretty simple fix: enter the number with spaces -- 0400 000 000 -- and Outlook will leave it alone. If you keep having problems, check under the Phone and Modem options section in Control Panel to make sure it isn't set to the US or some other unhelpful location with different formatting requirements. (The alternative is to enter numbers in international format with an initial +61 and no leading zero, useful if you also synch your contacts to your phone but a bit of a pain if nearly all your contacts are using Aussie numbers.)

 

Tags: au | contacts | email | fix | outlook