Word 2003 replacing hyphens with dashes

[Angelia]

How do I get Word 2003 to stop replacing hyphens in a group of numbers with
dashes?

For example 12345-340-9488288-YXZ-0001 might have three of the four hyphens
replaced with dashes. It's not consistent which ones get replaced, either. I
hope I've just missed a switch somewhere ...

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you put a space before the hyphen it will be converted to an en dash.

 

[Angelia]

en As far as I can tell, that's not what's happening here. We type numbers,
then a hyphen, then more numbers. There are no spaces. When we reopen the
file, some of the hyphens have been replaced by en dashes.

Is the space+hyphen = en dash an AutoCorrect item that can be changed so it
doesn't happen?

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Should be. Uncheck the "symbol characters" setting in Tools | AutoCorrect,
AutoFormat As You Type, I think.

Doesn't sound like it will fix your problem, necessarily, as usually
AutoCorrect happens immediately, not on reopening. So something else may be
going on.