This is the Operator: Number Please�

---

You still don't have the phone number? Came up empty on that one? There are a number of possibilities here. If that old friend of yours has an unlisted number, you're not going to find him or her here. Is there an off chance that you don't remember exactly how the last name is spelled? Use wildcards if you're not completely sure� your friend's last name spelled Symington or Symmington? Try Sym*.

Narrow down the location as much as you can, especially if the last name is much more common, such as Smith or Jones or White. Try variations on the theme, depending on the name. If you're sure your friend's name is John Smith, enter that information and try it one state at a time. Lycos will only give you the first 100 matches you request and there are more than 100 John Smiths in Michigan alone. If you're pretty sure your friend is back in Michigan, narrow the search by city. There are a heck of a lot of John Smith's in the U.S..

Still no luck? Let's pop back up to People Find and see if your elusive friend has an e-mail address instead. Sometimes people don't think about un-listing those.

See? There, just above the place where you've been entering the last name? Yes, one line up. The link for e-mail addresses. Click on it. The screen that appears looks a lot like the search for phone numbers screen.

Once again, I'll go in search of myself. Because brigman l* (without city and state fields) worked for me for my phone number, I'll use the same fields in this example. Click on the Go Get It icon. Yes, there are three L. Brigmans with e-mail addresses and 2 of them are me. You'll use the same methods for broadening (by using wildcards) or tightening (by narrowing down to exact spellings of the name and entering city and state information) your searches as you did for the address search.