The telephone numbers, in Contacts, on my new iMac appear in a strange format. The phone numbers start with 2 digits, but after that it groups them in fours. eg. 12 3456 7890 instead of 123-456-7890.
I have followed all the suggestions recommended here...a) restoring contacts on cloud to earlier date, b) turning off/on sync to cloud. But nothing fixes this.
Any suggestions would be appreciated
Steve
iMac 27″, macOS 10.15
It sounds like it's displaying phone numbers in the format for another country.
The easiest way to force this is by using prefixes; for example, if I type +11234567890, I get "+1 (123) 456-7890", but if I type +811234567890 (Japan prefix), I get "+81 12 3456 7890", the correct format for Japan (which looks like what you might be getting).
Places you can adjust default behavior that might be relevant:
Under Contacts Preferences, General tab, make sure that you have the correct country selected for Address Format. You can also set this on a per-card basis, although I'm not sure whether it affects phone number formatting.
Go to System Preferences, Language & Region pane, and make sure your preferred language is correct, that you don't have any undesired languages in the list, and that the region setting matches your region. I've occasionally seen Macs at work default to Afghanistan instead of the US for some reason, which causes some odd display issues like that.
While you're in there, confirm that there aren't custom settings for any apps in the other tab.
It sounds like it's displaying phone numbers in the format for another country.
The easiest way to force this is by using prefixes; for example, if I type +11234567890, I get "+1 (123) 456-7890", but if I type +811234567890 (Japan prefix), I get "+81 12 3456 7890", the correct format for Japan (which looks like what you might be getting).
Places you can adjust default behavior that might be relevant:
Under Contacts Preferences, General tab, make sure that you have the correct country selected for Address Format. You can also set this on a per-card basis, although I'm not sure whether it affects phone number formatting.
Go to System Preferences, Language & Region pane, and make sure your preferred language is correct, that you don't have any undesired languages in the list, and that the region setting matches your region. I've occasionally seen Macs at work default to Afghanistan instead of the US for some reason, which causes some odd display issues like that.
While you're in there, confirm that there aren't custom settings for any apps in the other tab.
Just more thing to mention....this also solved another problem. In messages, on my iMac, I was only able to see contacts as a phone number, not name. Once I corrected my country in system preferences, the names started to appear correctly. Bonus.
Thanks for quick reply. You solved it! The contact preferences were correct...but the the system preferences were set to another country by default. Once I changed that, all the phone number formats were corrected. Thanks!
Glad that worked. And like I said, wrong region setting can cause odd display issues in some surprising spots.
Phone number in contacts does not appear in proper format
