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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-14T10:27:44+00:00

I have the need to identify records in my database that contain a phone

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I have the need to identify records in my database that contain a phone number so that I can send them on to a contact team.

Example:
tblData

  • id
  • comment
  • dtCreate

Given this table structure, the query might be:

SELECT * FROM tblData WHERE comment [HeresWhereINeedHelp]

The comment might (and likely will) contain all sorts of other data. An example comment:

Yea, I had a terrible experience. I’d like for someone to call me at 111.222.3333. Thank you.

The record containing this comment should be pulled in the query because it contains a phone number.

I tried an extended SPROC that enabled regex searching, but the performance was terrible. The system is SQL Server 2012.

Many thanks for any direction.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You should look at the LIKE operator. In your case, you’re probably going to go for something along the lines of 

    WHERE comment LIKE '%[0-9][0-9][0-9]_[0-9][0-9][0-9]_[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]%'

    Since you’re searching anywhere in the string, this will also take a long time to process over a large dataset – another option you might want to try is checking the comment field for a phone number when it’s entered and then flagging that row using a column like ContainsPhoneNumber (bit). That way, you can index on that column and do faster lookups.

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