Can You Find Someone’s Phone Number With an Email Address?

Cindy Ellis - November 25, 2022

When making a new acquaintance, it has become very common to exchange email addresses. However, sometimes you want to contact a business contact or acquaintance more directly without the risk of ending up in their spam folder or being buried under a pile of work emails.

Whether you only exchanged email addresses when first meeting someone, or you lost your phone contacts when upgrading to the newest model of smartphone, you may wonder whether you can use an email contact to find someone’s phone number.

Fortunately, there are methods of finding phone numbers via email addresses. In this guide, we offer a few practical suggestions for ways to find a missing phone number, even if you only have someone’s email address at the moment.

Finding a Missing Phone Number

The easiest way to search for a phone number is to use a tool, such as Information.com’s phone search tool. If you have someone’s first and last name and the area where they live, you can find phone directory listings for most people.

Of course, there may be cases when you do not have this complete information. For example, an old friend may have moved to a new state or married and changed their last name. This can make it challenging to find their current phone number.

You may also not have a person’s last name, or only know them by a nickname. In the situation of a casual acquaintance, friend of a friend, or even a distant relative this may be the case. In either situation, you don’t need to give up hope.

There are several strategies you can try to find their phone number with the information you do have.

Use the Email Address

Unfortunately, at this time, there is no reliable direct way to search for a phone number via an email address. It makes sense since people can easily register multiple email addresses through various hosts with little to no personal information needed. Here are some ways you can still use an email address to find someone’s number.

Contact Them Via Email

The first step, in most cases, would be to email the person directly at the email address you have for them. You can remind them in the email of how you are acquainted and politely request they give you their phone number so you can communicate more easily.

Of course, if someone infrequently checks their email, they may not see or respond to your request as urgently as you need. And, as mentioned above, there’s always a chance you could end up in their spam folder if you haven’t emailed them before. If you try emailing them and don’t hear back after a few days, you can try some other methods of finding their number.

Look for Information in the Email Address

If you’re struggling to remember their full name, often emails will include someone’s name or initials. Initials or a partial name can help jog your memory if you simply can’t remember their surname, for example. Once you have their full name, it’s much easier to search for their number.

If it’s a business email, it may also have the company someone works at in the email address. Some companies will list employee profiles on their website, particularly if it is a smaller company or your acquaintance works in an upper-level position. Some companies may also list their company directory online.

By looking at their company page, you can likely find their full name, and possibly the town they work or reside in. You could do a phone number search once you have that information, or you could call their place of work to contact them. Exercise discretion, however, because some workplaces frown on employees receiving personal phone calls at work.

Search on Social Media

On social media sites, like Facebook, users may choose to make their information publicly available. They can choose to make their email address searchable, so depending on their personal settings, you may be able to use this method. Simply use the search box on Facebook’s main page to type in their email address and hit enter.

If they have that email address linked to their account and their privacy setting allows it, their profile should come up. You may need to be logged in to your own Facebook account to view their whole profile. From their profile page, you can send them a friend request or a message request. This may be less likely to get lost in the shuffle than an email, depending on how often someone checks their notifications.

Some people may also have their phone number on their public profile. Simply go to the “About” tab on their Facebook profile and look under the heading “Contact and basic info.” Depending on their privacy settings, you may need to have them accept a friend request before you can see this full information.

Search Engines Are Your Friend

The first thing many people do when searching for something is to plug it into Google. If you haven’t tried that with the email address in question, it’s worth checking to see if any results turn up. Someone may list their email address and phone number on a website or blog so people can reach out to them.

If their email address is listed on a webpage, a search engine can help bring it up and the page in question may have other information. It could list their full name, their mailing address, or even their phone number.

There are some search tools now available that claim to do phone number searches via email, but they can be unreliable due to the nature of email addresses not requiring personal information to register. You can try it, but be careful about clicking on pop-ups and ads that are common on such sites, which may contain cookies that slow down your browser.

Using an Email Address to Find a Phone Number

While it can be challenging to find someone’s phone number with just an email address, it’s not impossible. By using a little creative thinking and some of the search tools available to you online, oftentimes, you will be able to get the information you need.

Thanks to reverse phone search tools, once you have someone’s full name and the area where they live, you can easily find phone numbers in the public directory. Starting with an email address, you can potentially find this information, so you can get to the next step of the process.