Seperate us cell phone number from landline number? - excel

Question

Is there a way i can check if a US number is a cell phone or landline?
I have found several sites online, but they are paid per number. Can i use code to do the check?
Thanks

Answer 1

This is less of an Excel question and more of a general question about phone numbers. If there's some way (I don't know of one) that you can freely check a phone number against some registry, then we could use some code to do this in Excel - sure. However, I'm not sure how to check whether a line is mobile or land line.
I did find this SO thread, but it looks like the free options are limited. I did find this site just Googling around, but I have no idea how to check if that's accurate or not. There's this site which also charges, but could help you.
Again, if you (or someone) does find a way to check phone numbers, you could probably automate it with VB, but getting to that point is the tricky part.
(Note: the webpages I linked above I just found Googling around).

Answer 2

I have worked on an admittedly crude way to do what you've requested, using the free service phonevalidator.com. I cannot attest to the accuracy of this service, but I tried for several cell numbers I know and several landlines as well and it was accurate for them.
This option uses VBA to go to the website, automatically enter a number, and scrape the phone type off of the results page. I have made the scraping a function (probably could be optimized better, but it works).
In a standard code module, start with this function:
Public Function GetPhoneNumType(phoneNum As String) As String
Dim ie As Object
Dim objResult As Object
'Initialize IE
Set ie = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
'Go to the phone validator
ie.Navigate "http://www.phonevalidator.com/index.aspx"
'Wait for the page to load
Do While ie.ReadyState <> 4
DoEvents
Loop
'Enter the phone number
ie.document.getElementByID("ContentPlaceHolder1_txtPhone").Value = phoneNum
'Click the search button
ie.document.getElementByID("ContentPlaceHolder1_SearchButton").Click
'Wait until javascript executes and displays the PhoneTypeLabel
On Error Resume Next
Do Until Not objResult Is Nothing
Set objResult = ie.document.getElementByID("ContentPlaceHolder1_PhoneTypeLabel")
Loop
On Error GoTo 0
'Return the phone type result, either LANDLINE or CELL PHONE
GetPhoneNumType = objResult.innerText
End Function
This takes in a phoneNum as a string and returns the result either as LANDLINE or CELL PHONE (I'm not sure if there are any other return types).
For purposes of this example, let's assume that I entered two phone numbers (these can be with or without dashes, but should have no other symbols and no leading 1, etc.) in cells A1 and A2, I can call this function like so:
Public Sub TestPhoneNum()
Dim rngNumbers As Range, c As Range
Set rngNumbers = Sheets("Sheet1").Range("A1:A2")
For Each c In rngNumbers
c.Offset(0, 1).Value = GetPhoneNumType(c.Value)
Next c
MsgBox "Complete!"
End Sub
This will put the phone number type in the column adjacent (to the right) of each cell that contains a phone number. You can adjust A1:A2 to be whatever range has the phone numbers. Whichever range you enter, this subroutine will always place the phone number type in the right adjacent cell.
I added the message box because this code is slow, and that notified me when the code was done executing.
Hopefully this gets you at least started.