Today, the first thing that friends do when they form what they think is going to be a great relationship is exchange cell phone numbers. Some people are more guarded with their numbers, but most see no harm in sharing when they first feel a friendly connection with someone. What can happen after that varies, but many friendships grow. Depending on where you live, however, things can fade after a good relationship has been established, leaving you with only a cell number and a memory.

If you are thinking about contacting them, but you don't want to dial the number, that may be because some time has passed. You may worry they won't want to hear from you, or that perhaps someone else has no gotten that same number. If you want confirmation first, or if you want to find another way to contact them other than dialing, you have to find ways to look up that number.

You can try the search engines if you wish. The problem with this is that finding a match through a search can be very hard, and the match is very rare. That does not mean it will not happen, so go ahead and try it. It will only take up a few minutes of your time. You may also want to try someone's name to see if you can get any type of phone number at all to come up.

You can also try to look through professional networking sites for matches to the cell phone number or to the name of your old friend. Though posting numbers online is not wise, it is when you are trying to make business and career contacts through such sites. LinkedIn and Orkut are just two of them that you should try.

There is also another powerful tool that you can try when nothing else seems to work. Look for a site that will allow you to search a phone number. This works on cell numbers when you can not seem to find any information anywhere else. Not all numbers will be found, of course, but you may be surprised at the results you can get.