As was rightly pointed out by my colleague, in Outlook you cannot click on phone number in order to dial the number (see Click to Call … Sometimes).
You can change some configuration options in Outlook 2007 in order to improve the number of times when you can actually click to call.
Here's how step by step:
- In Outlook 2007, choose Tools, Options…
- Click on the Spelling tab.
- Click on the Spelling and AutoCorrection… button.
- Click on Proofing along the left-hand side of the dialog box.
- Click the AutoCorrect Options… button and then click the Smart Tags tab.
- Make sure the "Label text with smart tags" check box is checked.
- Make sure the check box beside the "Telephone number" recognizer is checked.
Not exactly straightforward but now, more of the time, when a telephone number appears in the body of an Outlook message, it is recognized as a telephone number and a little smart tag icon appears beneath it.
Clicking on the down arrow beside the smart tag icon gives you the "Call" option which opens the Office Communicator client and dials the selected number.
Sounds great but even after turning on these options, telephone numbers that appear in the subject line or location field (for a meeting request) still cannot be clicked on to initiate a call. And for a lot of meetings conference line numbers are entered in the location field.
Also, sometimes phone numbers are recognized when they are first entered but after entering more text they seem to no longer be labeled as smart tags. I also have not had consistent results having phone numbers recognized when reading received emails – and of course this is where you want to be able to click to call!
If anyone has suggestions or ideas on why the Smart Tag recognizers appear to work sporadically, please comment to this post.
Hopefully these problems with the telephone number recognizer will be corrected in a future version of the Outlook client.
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