Customizing the keyboard in Open Office

Factual Questions
1

For years, I’ve been using ctrl/alt/- to do an em-dash in Word, and my hands do it automatically. I’ve loaded Open Office on the new computer and naturally it doesn’t recognize this combo. It’s a real PITA having to open “insert symbols” to add an em-dash, esp. given how central they are to my prose. Alas, cybermoron that I am, though I’ve gotten to Tools/Customize/Keyboard, none of the options there seem to address this issue and I can’t figure out how to, yanno, customize the keyboard.

Any ideas?

2

While we’re at it, how do I turn off auto-complete? Just because I used the word six paragraphs ago, I don’t necessarily want to use it again every time I start a word with the same four letters.

3

I’m using OpenOffice 3.2, and it’ll automatically replace a double hyphen (–) with an em dash after I hit space after a following word. (I too have an automatic em dash motion, that being the cumbersome Ctrl+Shift+U2014, but I’m a Linux guy. Windows doesn’t do that, unfortunately. Alt+0151 works, but that may also be too cumbersome for you.)

This article may help; it mentions recording a macro and assigning it to a keyboard shortcut. That’s probably your best bet.

4

Tools > AutoCorrect Options > Word Completion, uncheck “Enable Word Completion”. I find that feature fairly unobtrusive, though; you can keep typing and the suggestion will disappear. It only appears in the document if you press Enter.

5

Many thanks!

6

While I was in there turning off word completion, I noticed the “replace” tab, so I changed the double-minus-sign to a true em dash there. (The how-to-page you linked to says it would do it if there is no space on either side, but I prefer spaced em dashes, so using that auto-convert and then having to go back and add spaces wouldn’t actually save me any keystrokes or synapses.)

Thanks again for your help.

(For those reading along wondering WTF we’re talking about, there are three lengths of lines used in text: the hyphen (-), the en dash (–), and the em dash (—). Most autoconverts will give you an en dash for two minus signs, but I almost always want a true em dash.)