In 1917, The R.H. Donnelley Company was incorporated and moved to New York City, retaining some offices in Chicago.

In 1929, Reuben Donnelley died; his company remained and continued to contract with the Bell System to publish telephone directories nationally.

The same year, R.H. Donnelley started publishing directories in Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania in competition with Bell Atlantic, although a lot of these areas were later sold off to Yellow Book.

In 1988, it formed Cen-Don with Centel (now part of CenturyLink) to publish telephone directories in Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia.

As a result of this suspension, R.H. Donnelley began trading its common stock over-the-counter (OTC) on the Pink Sheets beginning on January 2, 2009, under the symbol "RHDC".

On February 1, 2010, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) started trading 50 million Dex One Corporation shares under the "DEXO" ticker symbol.

[9] The merger reunites directory operations formerly part of Ameritech in Illinois, Verizon, and Qwest, all of which haven't been under common ownership since the Bell System divestiture in 1983.