>Does anyone know if you can globally change the area code in the Outlook address book?

Mary,
I'm not sure but I suspect the default area code comes from your telephony dialing properties and not from within Outlook itself. Atleast that's what seems to be happening on my NT4 workstation machine where I have RAS setup. I've noticed that when I'm out of town and change the area code in telephony properties, then try an add a new contact, I get the local are code instead of my usual area code... to get around this I always specify area code and not leave it default when adding a phone number to a contact item. HTH