Phone Number styling in Windows 8.1 IE11

Question

I have just noticed that Windows 8.1 (IE11) that the phone number on my site is changed to a link and changes the colour and adds an underline as if it is a link but despite my best efforts I cannot get the css to override this styling that seems to be being applied automatically. It is not even applying the a tag style from my stylesheet.

Can anyone tell me what tag the styling is being applied to by IE so I can get it formatted correctly. I already have a span class applied to the phone number and have tried changing that to text-decoation: none, border: none, color: red etc but nothing happens.

Answer 1

According to Microsoft’s document IE on Windows 8.1, “Starting with IE11 on Windows 8.1, Internet Explorer in the Windows UI automatically turns phone numbers into clickable links. Automatic phone number detection is not supported on Internet Explorer for the desktop. When IE encounters a telephone number as part of content rendered using a supported HTML element, it turns the number into a clickable link (and does so without modifying the DOM). When the user clicks the link, the default application that handles telephone calls on the system will be invoked.”

A linked document says that this feature can be disabled using the following tag:

<meta name="format-detection" content="telephone=no"/>