Help Contacts phone numbers with tilde "~" don't dial

[keithseabourn]

I have a number of contacts with a phone number entry like 407-555-1212~Peter. I use it to differentiate between cellphones for husband and wife in the same contact record. It's worked great on my previous phones, but with Contacts on my Nexus One, the entire string is converted into a number like 407555121257259, and the phone announces that the number cannot be dialed. Any suggestions?

 

[Phydeaux]

Use a different character.

 

[MartinS]

Why do you need to do that on the Nexus One?

You can just save them under different phones...

eg:

wife mobile
wife home
wife office...

 

[keithseabourn]

Good question, re Why do I need it rather than creating multiple entries. I'm syncing with 2 desktop apps (Outlook and a company proprietary one) that are not so flexible.

 

[omatix]

I'm actually surprised you found a piece of software that would let you enter letters into a phone number field. Weird.

I think you're SOL on getting this to ever work on your N1, to be honest. If you want a quickish way of changing all your numbers (not what you really want, I know), i'd export your database from Outlook or wherever as a CSV file, then use some regular-expression capable editing software to intelligently find-and-replace anything that goes "~name,". Then re-import it into Outlook.

(If regular expressions sound like a pain in the butt or total gibberish to you, check out this page for some info: Regular-Expressions.info - Regex Tutorial, Examples and Reference - Regexp Patterns

You'll use the knowledge a thousand times in your life, if you ever edit any kind of document. It'll be worth it.

Yes, I know this is a little OT. Sorry.)