A hopeless task, in my experience, since many countries have different recommendations. Here the "standard" is one format for "wired" phones, and one for mobile phones. In our applications we simply let the customer choose between different standard formats, or to create their own.

It's a good indication of the problem that not even Microsoft suggests any phone formats in Outlook or Excel.

However, we always store only the numbers, not the extra formatting characters, in a character field.

>Hi all,
>
>I'm looking for a source for telephone number formats for the world. Different countries use "nnn-nnnn", "nn nn nn nn", "nnnn nnnn", etc.
>
>The goal is to be able to display/print phone numbers properly based on country code. A table based on country code would be ideal of course. However, there might not be such a thing as a uniform numbering scheme. I've seen International Telecommunication Union documents for Switzerland for example, show contact numbers in both "nn nn nn nn" and "nnnn nnnn" formats in the same document.
>
>Anyone have any insights on this?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Gary