My old Address Book (prior to Mountain Lion's change to Contacts) had hundreds of phone numbers wirth the preference that they would NOT be auto formatted --- I entered the numbers just as I wanted them to appear. Now, after updating to Mountain Lion, all my phone numbers ar formatted the SAME (U.S. convention with use of parenthesis) which is not what I want. Anyone know of a workaround (or will Apple correct this with an update?).
Hi Susan --
Am curious to know which number you called -- the AppleCare Support one relating to the machine on which you're using Mountain Lion, or something else?
Meantime though, I've also initiated a new "issue report" at the Apple Developer Connection site...
https://developer.apple.com/support/resources/bug-reporting.html
It's worth signing up for (regardless of your technical expertise), if only as an alternate channel to try and communicate some practical, real-world information from those of us not living inside the Cupertino bubble.
Hi John -
Thank you for the suggestion about signing up for the developer site. Great idea!
I called 1-800-MY APPLE and asked for Technical Support. After issuing the report the tech support rep asked if I wanted to speak with Customer Service to lodge a complaint. I didn't have time today but will do so when I call again on Friday.
Also have this problem. Easy fix would be to allow autoformatting to be disabled. My 1000+ contacts are from all over the world, so one country won't do. Custom formatting allowed me to keep track of country codes, area codes etc and actually dial reliably when I was either there or outside of the country. Was able to accomodate all of the different formats, even the oddball cellphone numbers.
Really miss the ability to make custom formats
Annoyed that one cannot remove the auto formatting
I have not found that Apple's default phone formats have anything to do with the address country and why would they? The world is much more complicated than Apple realises and as an example I have contacts with home and work addresses in multiple countries and with corresponding phone formats.
If you put a + in front of the number, you can format it any way you want. I live in Hong Kong so I enter local numbers like this, +852 1234 5678. This does not interfere with making local calls. For overseas numbers, the same applies, so a UK number in London might look like this, +44 20 1234 5678.
This does not alter the fact of Apple's incompetence in unilaterally altering thousands of phone formats in my Address Book/Contacts database.
It's time that Apple began to pay attention to the needs of the business community and accepted that its Mickey Mouse little programs like Contacts are simply inadequate.
Good point. Am discovering that by inserting the +country code, several of my contact numbers are assuming proper format. Will continue to dig..... Still prefer the former method
Even adding the plus doesn't always work well. People in my contacts book have both US and India phone numbers. If I add a plus to one number it gets formatted like +91 18235623--very hard to read. But Indian phone numbers are of variable length. If I add another digit it is formatted a bit more nicely as +91 1822 56231. And then some numbers are formatted in a reasonable way, e.g. +91 97-17-173147. But am I supposed to go change phone numbers to have a leading + in my thousands of contacts? Why can't I keep my old formatting?
I was just getting excited about the workaround, adding a "+" (not excited about having to edit hundreds of contacts) but now it is being said the workaround has its own problems. Apple really just needs to put back in the user preference to display all numbers AS ENTERED, no formatting, no country specific codes, NOTHING in that box except what I put there.
The only thing I've found that helps is to put either a comma or a semicolon between items.
222-444-6666 ext 77 will format to: 2224446666ext77
but
222-333-4444,ext,77 will format to (222) 333-4444,ext,77
which is not perfect but better than having it all run together on the iMac with ML. As reporeted earlier, looks fine on iCloud.
Al
Apple, when will this be fixed? It is absurd the phone format choice was removed from ML. Get this fixed! Comon! Stop fixing things that are not broken. Gotta give user the choice.
Is Apple getting as bad as MS? Leave things alone that work well. I stopped using MS Office because they enforced ribbons when menus have served me well for two decades. Stop telling me what is best for me, when I disagree. It makes me want to look harder for open source products - which are less likely to be modified for no good reason, or leave options open. In the long run, this could be bad for Apple's business model.
Anyone have any update on a fix? Apple still has not responded or put out an update. Please tell us when this will be sorted out!
Adding the country code doesn't always solve the problem. I travel all over the world and enter numbers both for international calls as well as using the same number locally. Problem is that every country had differing requirements for calling out of country. What I use from one will not work calling from another without the proper prefex. So I always entered the numbers by location of the call.
The other problem is that outside of the US come countries require a city code depending on whethe you are within a specific distance from that location. Sometimes it boils down to the tower you're connected to. Granted sometimes I had multiple numbers or contacts, but contacts does not allow unlimited numbers.
Apple in this case needs to step back and allow the individual to set format.
Anyone heard of an Apple fix for the phone fields yet?
Has anyone heard whether Apple is even aware of the phone number format problem?
Apple is well aware of the issue. I've called 5 or 6 times now. The more people that call in to complain the better. The case # I opened is
#
And no, nothing has been done to correct the problem. Maybe with the next update but doubtful.
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phone number format in Mountain Lion
