Abstract: A method and apparatus for automatic creation of an electronic telephone directory uses intelligent automatic recognition of whether a telephone number is considered by the user as an important one or not. A telephone number is recognized to be an important one when certain user actions or situations relating to this telephone number occur. These include calling back a Caller ID number repeatedly or a certain number of times within a certain time period, receiving the same Caller ID number repeatedly within a certain time period, manually dialing a number that matches one of those in the memories; or, during a Caller ID on Call Waiting, exercising options like dropping the existing call and switching to the new caller, etc. Once a telephone number is determined to be an important one based on these criteria, the number is automatically stored into a permanent memory that is the electronic directory.