Outlook Contacts Telephone numbers need resetting

[keviom]

Hi,

I have posted this in Outlook contacts, but someone suggested programming
might be better so here goes.

I have a public contacts folder set up in outlook 2000. Unfortunately the
phone numbers were typed in the following format + 1 - 232 - 67890 (spaces
and dashes as shown). We have now upgraded to outlook 2003 and now when we
add new contacts the phone number format is set to +1 232 - 6789, even though
we type in the format originally used (BTW the contacts form is moified which
stops the numbers being underlined for some reason). The problem I have is
that the 1300+ contacts that where already there need changing to match the
new format. I have tried changing and reseting the Dialing properties to
another country and back to UK, and exporting to PST file and re-importing,
but no luck.

Does anyone know how to automatically reset the existing phone numbers to
the new format please.

Thanks

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

Usually you would have to read each phone number field in each contact and
then rewrite that information back to the items, but that might not work in
a custom contact form.

 

[keviom]

Thanks for the reply. I have ried this manually (copy the nuber delete the
original and paste back into the field, but with 1300 + contacts each with 2
or more phone numbers thats not a task I really want to do. I was wondering
if there's a way to force the fields to reset themselves to the new defaults.

Kevin

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

You could try code that iterates the contacts folder items and reads each of
the 17 phone numbers per contact and then strips out all spaces and dashes
and writes back the massaged number to that phone field. Then save each
item. That should force Outlook to format each number.