I tried to get Siri to remind me to call someone later, but I couldn't do it because the person's phone number wasn't in my contacts.
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Siri won't set a reminder to call someone if their number is not in your contacts
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He's saying it wouldn't work because he doesn't have their phone number. I have no idea why he'd expect it to call somebody whose phone number wasn't in the address book, though.
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Well I don't think that you can get Siri to automatically call someone at a specific time (other than telling Siri to call someone now), so we're just talking about setting a reminder which will notify you at a certain time to do something (in this case, reminding you to call someone). And while it would be ideal if everyone you were creating reminders about was in your contact list, I can see how there would be cases when that would not be true (e.g., "Remind me to call the veterinarian at 6pm").
That said, I just tried creating a reminder for a make-believe person not in my contact list and it did so without a problem (I said "Remind me to call David Samuelson at 5:30" and it even spelled the name the way that I would have wanted it to).
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If the person isn't in your contacts at all, then it does work. If the person is in your contacts, but without a phone number, then Siri just replies that she doesn't have a phone number for ___. Nothing further. I tried replying with something like "set it up anyway" (and other variations) but she then says she doesn't understand. Further, if you're calling someone who isn't in your contacts at all, but someone with a similar name is, and without a phone number, then she replies as above, and of course she is referring to the person in your contacts.
For example, "remind me to call John at 3" and you mean some John other than the one in your contacts. If you have a John Doe (someone else) in your contacts, then she will say that she doesn't have a number for John Doe.
So if Siri thinks you're setting it up to call someone in your contacts, and that person doesn't have a number, she won't let you set the reminder, which is a little quirk.
(Anti-prick mechanism: "Why would someone be in your contacts if you don't have a phone number?" Because you just have an email in your address book. And, as noted above, it could be a different person completely, who doesn't even have an entry at all.
"Why would you be calling someone who isn't in your contacts?" Because not everyone is in my contacts, and your question misses the point.)
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Ya know. With all the typing done here you could have already edited the contact to include the number thus saving valuable Internet - ink.
Thanks for the clarification. Yes, that definitely sounds like a shortcoming. I'll give it a try later to see if I can figure out a way around it.
Unless the person has the exact same name, I don't see how this is a problem. As in, if you have a John Doe in your address book and want Siri to remind you to call John Smith, you just need to specify "remind me to call John Smith".
As to the first problem... sounds like a glitch. Try using a word other than "call". As in "remind me to give John a ring".
Yeah, I think that's the approach. I recall trying something like "remind me to contact John" and that didn't help, but "give John a ring" would probably work fine. Thx.