How do I stop Outlook '03 from mangling my phone numbers?

[Jono1]

I'm running Outlook 2003 SP2 on Vista Home Premium.

My problem is with the way it auto-formats phone numbers stored in contacts.
It seems fine with landline numbers, but when it comes across a mobile number
it assumes the first two digits are an area code and it shows up like this
(xx) xxxx-xxxx
This formatting would be fine in the US where mobiles actually have area
codes, but here in Australia it's completely wrong. And there's nothing I can
do about it. I try to manually correct it by double-clicking on the number
and changing it that way, but it just changes back all by itself.
How can I get Outlook to format the mobile numbers in proper Australian
format , ie, xxxx-xxx-xxx?

 

[homeLAN]

Enter your phone numbers (including mobile numbers) in full international
format, and they will get formatted corectly in Outlook: +ccc (aaa) nnnn...

There is no difference between landline and mobile numbers. Australian
mobile numbers actually do have an area code - a one digit area code. You may
not think of that first digit as an area code, but it is an area code. So
Outlook is handling it correctly. If it's showing up as a two-digit area
code, do you have your dialing location set properly?

 

[Jono1]

Thanks for the suggestion, but my definition of the correct format for a
phone number is different to Outlooks - I prefer to view it without all the
brackets and the +'s etc.
I was also worried that when I synced the numbers back to my phone it
wouldn't handle the brackets etc, but it didn't seem to mind.

Anyway I figured out that if I just typed in the phone number including
spaces where I want them, Outlook doesn't seem to touch it.

 

[Brian Tillman]

Thanks for the suggestion, but my definition of the correct format
for a phone number is different to Outlooks - I prefer to view it
without all the brackets and the +'s etc.
I was also worried that when I synced the numbers back to my phone it
wouldn't handle the brackets etc, but it didn't seem to mind.

Anyway I figured out that if I just typed in the phone number
including spaces where I want them, Outlook doesn't seem to touch it.

If Outlook can't recognize it as a phone number, it won't change it.