How to write a phone number
One page for the whole cabinet. Wherever you type a number in Blackbox Business — in a contact, in a file for import, in the black list, in a check, in a single message — these are the rules.
The short answer
Write the number in international format, with the country code and without spaces:
447700900456. A leading + is fine as well.
What is cleaned up for you
Spaces, brackets, hyphens and dashes of every kind, and the leading plus, are stripped
before the number is stored. +44 (7700) 900-456 and 447700900456 are the same number,
and both are accepted.
A comma means something of its own: it separates numbers. A field that takes a list
reads 447700900111,447700900222 as two numbers.
Length
Write the number complete — the country code and the subscriber number together. The form checks the length while you type, so a slip of the finger shows up at the field rather than in a report.
When the country is filled in for you
A number typed without a country code is completed with the country the field is set to, and the field takes it from your computer's time zone. That is convenient while the list is local, and worth knowing the moment it is not: a number from another country reaches its owner when its own code is in front of it.
Write the country code for every number, and each one goes exactly where you mean it — whatever computer you are working from.
When a number is written differently
What happens next depends on where you typed it.
| Where | What happens |
|---|---|
| Import of contacts | The row is skipped, and the result says how many were skipped and shows examples |
| Manual entry of a list | The form points at the line and waits for it |
| A single message | The form points at the number before you continue |
The import is the one to come back to: the count of skipped rows is in the result, and once those lines are corrected in the file and imported again, the people behind them are in the list.