# Formatting Phone numbers

**URL:** <https://community.parabola.io/t/formatting-phone-numbers/1814>\
**Category:** Ask a question\
**Tags:** Building-Flows\
**Created:** [May 21, 2021, 2:15am UTC](https://community.parabola.io/t/formatting-phone-numbers/1814 "2021-05-21T02:15:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Luke\_Jamison](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a587f6/32.png) [@Luke\_Jamison](https://community.parabola.io/u/Luke_Jamison)\
**Post date:** [May 21, 2021, 2:15am UTC](https://community.parabola.io/t/formatting-phone-numbers/1814/1 "2021-05-21T02:15:37Z")

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Hello I’m currently looking for a way to format phone numbers basically all I wanna do is remove the possible country code due to a problem with a software that was automatically adding the incorrect country code so for some of the phone numbers they look like `+521234567891` or `(949) 123-4567` and even some are `+12345678910` and I just want the all to look like `9491234567`. Would really appreciate any suggestions with this 😊

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**Author:** ![Adam\_R](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/community.parabola.io/adam_r/32/2207_2.png) [@Adam\_R](https://community.parabola.io/u/Adam_R)\
**Post date:** [May 21, 2021, 5:55pm UTC](https://community.parabola.io/t/formatting-phone-numbers/1814/2 "2021-05-21T17:55:30Z")

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Hey @Luke_Jamison👋

We can format these numbers as `9491234567` by starting with a `Clean Data` step, removing all non-numbers to eliminate spaces, plus signs, and parentheses.

 ![Screen Shot 2021-05-21 at 10.48.40 AM](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/uploads/parabola/original/2X/3/32dc2efb913d516fd9fcd71b77e2ca183e9c232b.jpeg)

We can then use the `Extract Text From Column` step to identify the final 10 digits of the unformatted number, which should extract the number without the country code or preceding `1`.

 ![Screen Shot 2021-05-21 at 10.54.15 AM](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/uploads/parabola/original/2X/e/e44e3090cd54c33ddecd34a091b05a187548583a.jpeg)

Hope this helps – let me know if you run into any issues, or have any additional questions!

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**Author:** ![Luke\_Jamison](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a587f6/32.png) [@Luke\_Jamison](https://community.parabola.io/u/Luke_Jamison)\
**Post date:** [May 21, 2021, 6:44pm UTC](https://community.parabola.io/t/formatting-phone-numbers/1814/3 "2021-05-21T18:44:40Z")

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> [@Adam\_R](#):
>
> Extract Text From Column

@Adam_R Thank you so much for the help on this really appreciate it looks like I got it all up and working!

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**Author:** ![Mark\_Berry](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/community.parabola.io/mark_berry/32/2159_2.png) [@Mark\_Berry](https://community.parabola.io/u/Mark_Berry)\
**Post date:** [November 30, 2023, 1:39am UTC](https://community.parabola.io/t/formatting-phone-numbers/1814/4 "2023-11-30T01:39:06Z")

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Thanks for the very concise instructions here @Adam_R  
This may be a newbie question, but to take it one step further, if I’ve reduced all phone numbers to valid 10-digit numbers, is there a simple way to add back the area code, which is in almost all cases in my data, +61 …

 ![Parabola Phone 10 digits + Area Code](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/uploads/parabola/original/2X/5/5c1aa29c1bdfabbb754c7a8b52f6c640ed70f14c.png)

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**Author:** ![Mark\_Berry](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/community.parabola.io/mark_berry/32/2159_2.png) [@Mark\_Berry](https://community.parabola.io/u/Mark_Berry)\
**Post date:** [November 30, 2023, 1:50am UTC](https://community.parabola.io/t/formatting-phone-numbers/1814/5 "2023-11-30T01:50:01Z")

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Just found the answer “hiding in plain sight” Add Text Column !! 😉