>I don't believe that is correct for the formatting of a report. In other words, you could use "@R (999) 999-9999" in the Formatting Codes field, but you can't call a function that returns that value that VFP then uses for the formatting.

You use the format string in the format field XOR you use the function in the expression field. One of these should work. Never tried both at the same time, as it would be an overkill with sort of predictable results.