New Telephone format change?

I am an asst Stake clerk for membership. One of the asst ward clerk for membership contacted me and told me that he's been in contact with CHQ regarding a problem with new records he's received. The phone number dropped the last 2 digits. e.g. xxx-xxx-xx is all that he received. He contacted the sending clerk and was told that he sent the entire number. He then contacted CHQ and was told that they changed the format to take only the first 10 characters. Evidently SLC only wants 10 numbers with nothing else. Can anyone confirm that this has changed?

I can say that the 7 records received in the last 5 days by one of my units all have complete phone numbers despite having hyphens in them.

Taking only the first 10 characters is obviously a problematic approach. Better would be to take the first or last 10 numbers, obviously.

In the UK, at least at the moment, normal land line and mobile numbers are 11 characters. Quite often there is a space after the area code. We don't see a problem when receiving numbers, in MLS, even with longer numbers including spaces.

Different area offices can set different formats for things like phone numbers and addresses.

RussellHltn wrote:Different area offices can set different formats for things like phone numbers and addresses.

True, but the OP was referring to the state of Washington in the United States, and all of the US is administered the same way in this regard.

So far we have one second-hand report of a phone number being truncated to 10 characters, and at least one report of receiving records with no such problem. And I can also confirm that we have recently received records with phone number consisting of more than 10 characters, with no truncation.

Thank you all who responded. I didn't think the church would have made a change like this without doing a better job of communication. I could understand a forcing a standard format like xxx-xxx-xxxx, but didn't think they would just truncate it. I will work with the membership clerk. Thanks.

I have a similar question about phone-number formats. A member recently moved into our Georgia (USA) ward from Central America. He uses his non-US phone number on What'sApp to communicate, so I need to get it in the directory. But, the online LCR member-record software will not take his 11-digit phone number. It has a three-digit country code, four digits(dash-)four more digits +(###) ####-####. I tried just numbers. I tried with the + before country code. I tried parenthesis around the country code with and without +. Is there a way that I can get this to work, or do I need to call Global Support?

smithalanw wrote: Mon May 25, 2026 11:58 am Is there a way that I can get this to work, or do I need to call Global Support?

The phone number format template appears to be tied to the country for the residential address. You will need to call the Global Services Department (GSD) support to see what they can do.