Extract phone numbers
Paste a text: all the phone numbers it contains are extracted.
The real case
A list of contacts lands in an email, a group message or a filled-in form, and the numbers are scattered among the sentences. Copying them by hand is the fastest way to get a digit wrong. Here you paste the whole text and get one number per line, ready to drop into a spreadsheet or an address book.
How they're recognized
A phone number is recognized when the digits have the shape of a real number, written with spaces, dots, dashes, slashes or parentheses the way people write them: an Italian mobile (nine or ten digits starting with 3), an Italian landline (six to eleven digits starting with 0), a toll-free number, a Spanish number (nine digits starting with 6 to 9), a North American number written like (415) 555-2671, and any number with the international prefix, written with + or with 00.
The same number written in different ways is a duplicate: «415-555-2671», «(415) 555-2671» and «+1 415 555 2671» are the same phone, so it appears once, in the form of the first time. Two numbers written one after the other, separated only by a space, are split when all the digits divide into valid numbers.
Dates written in numbers (12.03.2024), amounts (1,250.00 €), runs stuck to a letter like an IBAN or a product code, and runs preceded by a label like «VAT», «invoice no.», «order», «IBAN», «ISBN» stay out. Large numbers written with dots between the thousands, like 331.000.000, stay out too: three groups of three like 800.123.456 are taken only after «tel.», «phone» or «toll-free».
Why you should always read it back
No program can know what a run of digits means without understanding the sentence around it: a ten-digit customer code starting with 3 has the shape of an Italian mobile, and without a label in front of it it ends up in the list. The other way round, a foreign number written without the international prefix, or with unusual separators like «415 - 555 2671» with spaces around the dash, may be missed. Those are the two possible errors, and it's worth skimming the list before you use it.
The same text, five things to look for
Above the box there are five buttons, and the same text can be run through the other kinds too, with the same rules: Email extractor, Link extractor, Extract hashtags and Extract mentions.
The same text with the same button gives the same list on all five pages.
Nearby tools
If you also need the email addresses out of the same text there is Extract emails from text, and for links Extract links from text. If the contacts are in a file exported from a phone instead, the right page is Open a .vcf address book, which reads names, numbers and addresses and turns them into a table. For every number, not just phones, there is Extract numbers from text.