Yep.

That's almost certainly what happened. I don't have a numerical keyboard on
my laptop and inserting an em-dash was precisely what I was trying to do.

Thanks for helping me put my "Symbols" line back in the "Insert" window.

And for figuring out how I lost it in the first place so I can try not to do
it
again.


"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

Reinstalling rarely helps in such a situation because it does not overwrite
Normal.dot or the Registry, where such settings are stored. Garfield-n-odie
has told you how to restore the menu command. May I suggest how you came to
lose it? The keyboard shortcut for what has been called the "destructive
cursor" or "terminator hyphen" is Alt+Ctrl+Hyphen. When you press this
combination, the mouse pointer changes to a black bar, like a giant minus
sign. When you click on a menu item (*any* menu item), it is removed. This
is handy for removing obsolete files from the File menu MRU list or the Work
menu, and it is "used up" after one click, but it can still be dangerous.

You may wonder how you happened to press this shortcut and remove the Symbol
menu entry. The usual cause is an attempt to insert an em dash, the shortcut
for which is Alt+Ctrl+Num- (described in Help as Alt+Ctrl+Minus). This means
the minus key on the numeric keypad. If you interpret it as meaning the
hyphen instead, you get the wrong shortcut. So you try to insert an em dash,
get no apparent result, and decide you'll use Insert | Symbol instead. Zap!
Symbol is gone!

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Lee McKnight" Lee wrote in message
...
Last May I bought a copy of Microsoft Word 2002 which I installed in my
(then) brand new Dell laptop running Windows XP Home Edition. Everything
worked fine until recently when I needed to insert a symbol into a
document.
When I pulled down the "Insert" window I was astonished to find that there
was no "Symbol..." line. I re-installed the software from the original
disk
but still no "Symbol..." line in the "Insert" window. What do I need to
do
to be able to insert symbols (specifically an em-dash and an accented 'a')
in
my document?
Lee McKnight