Phone number

The phone number field collects a phone number with the country code attached. Respondents pick a country (which sets the dial code) and type the rest. FormGrid validates the number against the country’s real numbering rules, so you only get phone numbers that can actually be dialed.

Adding a phone number field

  • Click the + button between blocks, or
  • Type /phone and select Phone number from the list

Settings

Click the drag handle on the left side of the field to open its settings:

  • Required makes the field mandatory.
  • Default country pre-selects a country in the picker so respondents from your primary market don’t have to find it themselves. Pick one from the dropdown, or start typing a name like “Germany” to filter the list.
  • No duplicates rejects submissions that reuse a phone number already submitted to this form. See Preventing duplicate submissions.

If you leave Default country empty, FormGrid guesses the respondent’s country from their browser language and timezone. So a respondent with a German browser sees Germany pre-selected, while a respondent in Tokyo sees Japan. They can always change it. This is the right setting for international forms where your respondents come from anywhere.

Set Default country explicitly when you know most of your respondents are in one place. The auto-detection is a best guess, not a perfect one, and a wrong guess is more annoying than no guess at all.

How respondents see it

The field has two parts side by side:

  • A country picker on the left showing the flag and dial code (for example ”🇩🇪 +49”). Click it to search and pick a different country.
  • An input on the right where they type the national part of their number.

FormGrid validates the full number against the picked country’s real numbering rules. If the number is incomplete, no error shows while they’re still typing. If the number is finished but invalid for that country, they see an error when they tab away or try to submit.

Respondents can type spaces, dashes, or parentheses however they like. FormGrid cleans the number up automatically.

How the number is stored

Every phone number is stored in E.164 format with the country code prefix and no spaces or punctuation. A German mobile typed as “176 12345678” is stored as +4917612345678.

This means:

  • Numbers are always comparable, exportable, and machine-readable.
  • The same number always looks the same regardless of how the respondent typed it.
  • You can send the value straight to an SMS provider, CRM, or database without further processing.

Tips

  • Use this instead of a Short text field whenever you’re collecting phone numbers. The built-in validation rejects gibberish, and the E.164 storage saves you from cleaning up data later.
  • The country picker handles +1 disambiguation. A respondent in Canada and a respondent in the US both pick their own country, even though they share the same dial code.

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