Bulk editing of phone numbers in Excel

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msnews.microsoft.com - 10 Sep 2007 19:33 GMT

I'm looking for a utility that will allow me to make bulk edits of phone
numbers in Excel (for reimporting into Outlook as a CSV file).

I need to be able to convert numbers in formats such as: 00123 456 7890 or
[123] 456 7890 into the correct 'canonical' format: +123 456 7890, so I
can use the shared fax service in Exchange.

I remember many years ago using a very powerful utility that allowed all
sorts of bulk data editing to be performed but I can't remember what it was
called.

Any suggestions?

JF.

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Piscator - 10 Sep 2007 20:49 GMT

I don't know of any utilities but it's only a few steps in Excel to do
it manually.

- Select the column phone numbers

- Edit, replace, Find What=[ , Replace with=
(replacing with nothing)
Do this for space, ], and any other characters in the strings

- Formal cells, Custom +### ### ####

- Select all cells, Copy, paste into Notepad

- Select all Notepad, Copy and paste back into the cells

Assuming you had 10 digits for each phone number that should be it.
You can check by inserting a column after the phone number with a
formula in it like
=IF(LEN(A1)<>13,"Check Number!","")

Voila!

P.S. Of course I trust you are not doing this for any Spamming
purposes. Telephone and Fax spammers have a special part of Hell
reserved where headphones are superglued to your ears and they play
continuous Britney Spears and Crazy Frog ringtones for eternity....

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