Dial phone numbers from Excel?

January 16, 2006 9:49 AM

Want to dial my softphone from Excel.

I have a softphone (part of my corporate phone network) on my PC. When using Outlook, I can use Outlook's built-in dialer to make phone calls right from the Contacts list. The dialog box comes down, and it tells my softphone to dial the number. Easy-peasy. The softphone is a proprietary application, by the way, but apparently interfaces with TAPI.

I have an Excel spreadsheet with a list of phone numbers, and I want the same functionality in Excel. I've found a number of actual phone dialers which would work, but I don't need the whole dialer program. I just need the same capability that Outlook has from within Excel: the TAPI module (I guess) that will access my softphone. So far, Google hasn't turned up what I want, which is a simple-plug-in without having to write any code or anything.

posted by TeamBilly to computers & internet (4 answers total)

Searching for 'TAPI excel' in Google and Google groups gives:

Two commercial solutions: Active Call Center, Phone Dialer Pro

Also, macros for use in Excel to dial a number in a cell: 1 2 3

And if that doesn't work, search for "Dial Phone Number Excel"..
posted by provolot at 10:07 AM on January 16, 2006

Provolot - I looked at all of these, and none of them do exactly what I want to do - they offer actual dialers - I don't want a dialer - I want the FUNCTION to talk to the dialer I already have.

The modules you list in line three might work, but I don't want to create a macro - don't know how to do the programming-fu. I'm working under the theory that there is something I can literally enable or drop onto an Excel toolbar that does exactly what the Outlook dialer does.

Thank you, though.
posted by TeamBilly at 10:54 AM on January 16, 2006

Depends on the softphone. Some might add a shell extension to intercept links with a particular protocol in them. For example, a hyperlink of dial://12125551212 might actually dial 1-212-555-1212 (click mine and see). phone:// might work, too. Again, it would depend on your softphone, if it registered itself as a hyperlink protocol handler.
posted by Merdryn at 2:30 PM on January 16, 2006

Not sure, Merdryn. I know that if I use the little dialer icon in Outlook, the softphone dials. I just want excel to do it, too. Does that help?
posted by TeamBilly at 3:49 PM on January 16, 2006