Personally... I don:t understand why there's a need to know exactly where
I'm living - seems to be an invasion of privacy. I don' have a fax, I
don't have a modem, and I don't have a telephone exchange, therefore the
information being asked for is ... irrelevant.
Given today's security threats though things exposed by Internet
Explorer,etc I would wonder if persons who wished to obtain details that
information could more easily do so with such requirements. You can
identify which town a person lives in and therefore which bank they're
likely to have an account at. Given the "constant-on" internet
connections that most people have, this could be an issue for some .....
having privacy means being secure to data theft, and in some organisations
this actually is taken seriously. Probably why they use dummy information
for those types of settings anyway.
If Micosoft has honestly adopted the settings described below, then they
would appear to be simply shooting themselves in the foot. So much for
having a common standard within the OS and having their own software
intergate with it.... Outlook needs to obtain your personal city/town
location in order to support a dialing number format ?! Huh ? Whatever
happened to the International dialing standard :
+ [country code] - [(local suffix)] telephone number
I'm not really aware of the way telephone numbers are formatted
differently within a country... perhaps someone could give an example -
I've asked for that before.
If you've got a modem, and with auto-dial setup, then I'd agree with Russ
but that's a feature of the autodialer... not of a mail program that's not
got anything to auto-dial.
As for the masking of the numbers I enter... there's never any question
about whether I have an autodial facility ? So what's the point of asking
for my own dial-out details.... seems pointless.
Furthermore, the bug I raised is being avoided without being mentioned....
the message box explicity says press cancel to stop further request for
the information, yet when you hit cancel it asks for the information
again... if that's not a bug then what is ? If they system really needs
the information.... which in all reality it doesn't since it's of
pointless value why should it offer the wrong text message within the
dialogue box ?
Anyways, this isn't a big deal - the thing that really is annoying is the
defend the "100% we're correct approach" which smacks of dishonesty - if
there's a problem, don't be ashamed of admitting it - maybe it'll be
looked at later on.
Russ Valentine said:
Outlook's developers felt that the dialing location would be a more
accurate and reliable source for determining how phone numbers should be
masked than the Regional and Language settings. They are right, of
course. Your Regional settings will not tell them your local area code.
Outlook has always masked phone numbers based on your local area code
(which it enters and puts in parentheses, and then hyphenates the other 7
digits). If you enter 10 digits and the first 3 are not your local area
code, it then knows not to add your local area code to the number you are
entering and proceeds to mask that number correctly.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
Steve said:
Hello Russ,
If it needs to know where I'm located to format phone numbers, then why
doesn't it use the Regional and Language settings ? Just out of
interest - can you illustrate how phone numbers are formatted
differently please - I've not seen an example to-date and would
appreciate knowning something new here.
Anyway, the BUG is the fact that, the message box said that by hitting
CANCEL, I'd be not required to make an input, so I did... yet it
continued to require the input... and unless I killed Outlook completely
I could not gain control again - due to the modality chosen for this
feature..... Sadly even, Task Manager wouldn't even kill this end-less
cycle but... thanks for Sysinternals Process Explorer I was able to put
an end to the situation.
Steve
Nothing to fix. Behaving as designed. It does not matter whether you
have a modem or not. Outlook needs to know your location in order to
know how to format your phone number.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
Using the Outlook address book (SP1)
When setting up a new contact I add their telephone number. Next thing
that happens is that I get a Location Information window appearing
asking for my location in order to setup auto-dialing...
If I hit cancel and then to the question "Are you sure you want to
cancel" select Yes the Location window doesn't close, worse still it's
stays in focus and doesn't allow me to continue working with Outlook.
The only solution is to enter the details which then takes me on to
the Phone & Modem options.
I don't have a modem, and these days with Broadband, I wonder how many
people do - so this "auto-dial" feature is both pretty out of date,
and a rather annoying bug - ie Cancel button doesn't work. Please fix
it.
