I've recently switched from Word 2007 to Word 2016. In Word 2007, pressing Ctrl+Num+- inserted an en dash without spaces around it. But in Word 2016, the result is a minus sign with spaces around it.

I'd rather not have to use Symbols or hold down the Alt key and type 0150 on the numeric keypad to insert an en dash, which I use frequently. Is there a non-macro way to do this quickly?

It is still the same.
Different computer, too?

Using the Insert Symbol's dialog for Special Characters, it still shows up as Ctrl+Num -.


You can check in that dialog and, if needed, assign the shortcut from there.

Excellent! Thanks for your help, Charles; I hadn't noticed the shortcut button. I'm now using just Ctrl+- and it works fine.

Ooops; I spoke too soon. Now the Ctrl+- shortcut inserts a minus sign with spaces around it. This may have been because the minus sign confuses the shortcut somehow. I changed the shortcut to Ctrl+d, and that seemed to work immediately after I assigned that shortcut, but after a couple of unrelated edits, Ctrl+d resulted in the space-minus sign-space again.

I'm using the latest version of Windows 10, and Microsoft Office Home and Student 2021. The Word version is Microsoft Word 2021 MSO (Version 2202 Build 16.0.14931.20118) 32-bit.

An update: the document is in Times New Roman, but the space-minus sign-space was in SimSun (the document was created by a Chinese scientist). I was able to correct this in the Symbol dialog by specifying Times New Roman in the Font pull-down, then General Punctuation in the Subset pull-down, then selecting the en dash symbol, then using the Shortcut Key button to specify the shortcut key combination.

I'm crossing my fingers, but the new symbol assignment seems to be robust.