[chapteryx]

I have created some custom properties for data that will be used repeatedly in my document. Because this document can function as a template, this is very useful when creating a similar document as the first.
I just change the docproperty values, refresh the document, and it's good to go.

But I've run into a problem with non-breaking characters.
If the value that I enter into the custom property field value
(Prepare, Properties, Document Properties, Advanced Properties, Custom, Value) contains a non-breaking hyphen, then that non-breaking hyphen is transformed into another character that LOOKS like a hyphen, but is NOT a non-breaking hyphen.
As an example, the company documentation standards require a format such as ABC-123 for the product names. I need to use a non-breaking hyphen in the product name, but I can not find a way to "preserve" the character set or font or something in order to faithfully reproduce the non-breaking hyphen in the actual document text.

"If a paragraph talking about the ABC-123 product needs to wrap,
then I do not want to see any of the wrapped lines cause the ABC-
123 custom property value get split over seperate lines, like it just
did there. That just looks all wrong, and is one of the reasons why a
non-breaking hyphen exists in the first place."

I've searched through MS WORD forums and technical help, and I did find a large collection of "optional switches" that can be applied to DOCPROPERTY fields, including MERGEFORMAT and CHARFORMAT among others.

But there's nothing available, it would seem, to allow me to retain those non-breaking hyphens in the custom property value once it's been inserted into the document text.

Any advice would be most welcome - I suspect that I've hit an unresolvable bug.

If there is a switch or a way to faithfully reproduce a non-breaking hyphen in the text from a custom property, then I would hope to find a way to specify that quickly too. If I need to CTRL-F9 and manually edit each field, then that's okay, I guess. But switching on a "retain formatting" switch somewhere in the Windows Registry just once and for all would be a godsend.

Thanks in advance for any help (or even commiserations )!!