Question

What would be a good Access SQL data type for a Phone Number field? 

Answer 1

Phone numbers typically contain only numbers but should still be created as TEXT (CHAR or VARCHAR) fields, given they do not represent numeric information and will never be used in calculations. Creating a phone number field as a text field also allows you to enter textual characters such as 800EATBEEF instead of 8003282333 as the field value. In addition, a text field would preserve a leading 0 digits if needed. 

Use TEXT (CHAR/VARCHAR) for phone numbers to accommodate non-numeric characters and preserve leading zeros.