Domestic & International Phone Numbers (Access 97 SR2)

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I developed an application which has been used by my client for many years. Their customers have always been domestic, but they recently have acquired another company and I need to modify the application to include international customers. I can modify the Customer table to hold all the other international data, but can someone help me handle the phone numbers? I currently hold numerous Phone and Fax numbers as text and use a standard format and/or input mask on all dependent objects. Do I need to create yet more Phone/Fax fields and decision logic when referencing them or is there a more efficient way to do this and still get them formatted/input properly on the “oh so many” forms and reports?
TIA

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You can put in a field for the country number, but I gave up trying to handle phone number formats for different countries when I worked for a marketing firm that did international events. The numbers are not the same length and aren’t anything like the same format. I finally wound up checking for the US and Canada and using an input mask and display format for them but allowing the users to enter the rest however it suited them and displayed it the same way.

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Thank you for letting me know that I am not alone in this dilemma. Just to be sure I understand, are you saying that the same field can accomodate both domestic and international, if I make the data length long enough and then check on all dependent forms and reports for the value, using the input mask/format only if it is domestic? What If or Case code will work best for this (what am I checking for… country or phone field data length?) Or are you saying two different fields are preferable; one for domestic and one for international?
At the risk of appearing dense, I just want to be sure before I add the code to all these objects.

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You aren’t being dense, just careful, and that’s to be encouraged.

My philosophy is, if they’re both phone numbers, they both belong in the same phone number field. However, I did stoop to testing the country field in the related address to see if I needed to apply a particular input mask or not on a form control.

If the number was US or Canadian, I tested for length and insisted on an area code. I did NOT save the formatting with the data for those numbers because I knew what the formatting should be and didn’t need to save it.

If the number was from some other country, I accepted whatever they entered and stored it as entered, spaces, punctuation, etc., since I had no way of knowing whether it was correct or not. Nor did I have a reliable way of telling whether or not they had included the international code at the beginning of the number, so I didn’t bother to try and capture that separately.

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Thank you, Charlotte. I was planning ahead. This db design modification will take me quite a while, as many other requests are involved. When I get to this point in the project, I’ll follow your direction.

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