How do you make a long dash?

**Generosity** · 08-03-2009

I’m using Windows Vista with Office 2007. Yesterday while working with MS Word, I used the command key in order to put long dash in the document but instead I saw a strange cursor symbol. Later when I tried inserting some symbols I found that all Symbols from the Inset Menu choice are disappeared. Any idea what is going wrong? Somebody please help.

**Toby-Martin** · 08-03-2009

Did you pressed key combination of Ctrl+Alt+Dash? If yes, it turns on the remove next item command. So, it zapped what you clicked on next. Anyways, there are few ways using which you can get it back. The very first major draconian would be to delete Normal.dot. Similarly less draconian is to reset your menu.

In case you have menu customizations you need to retain which can be done easily by clicking Tools > Customize > Commands. Set Categories to All Commands. Under Commands, find InsertSymbol, and drag it to the Insert menu... it will pop open; drop it where it used to reside. Edit/Delete Message

**CoYoTeA** · 08-03-2009

Let me give you some more info about Dash. Usually there are 2 types, i.e. em dash and en dash. Em dash -- Alt+Ctrl+Minus sign on the number pad whereas En dash -- Ctrl+Minus sign on the number pad. Here you can even use AutoCorrect to automatically change -- into a long dash.I have my autocorrect set to take - - and make it a long dash.