How can I insert special characters?

In the Help section, I find numerous reference to an " Insert" function, but I see no button for it and I cannot find any other way of starting that menu.

Also: the characters I need to insert are the short signs for the suits in a deck of cards - where could I possibly find those?

Extremely valuable! Thanks a bunch. Sorry about the late confirmation.

insert button, special characters. arial, liberation & PT among others include the playing card symbols but will require changing colors from black if desired. I use these extensively for Bridge documentation. good luck. keng

Very helpful - thanks - I apologize for the late confirmation.

My use is the same. Is there any way of changing the font color to red for hearts and diamond, automatically?

Hi mowence

It is available from the menu but, after some experimentation, I am surprised how limited it is. Let’s consider the standard LO-supplied option first, then move to an external suggestion, with finally a combo of (2) and LO Autocorrect.

I usually work with the font ‘georgia’, but that would not work under LO. The following therefore uses Arial:

libreoffice Writer 4.4.4.3 Debian-6.0

(menu):InsertSpecial Character...

The above will do what you want under your current limited scenario, but I would not suggest it as a long-term option as it is so limited. Make use of different options:-

  1. Linux (KDE): KCharSelect
  1. Windows: charmap

The window below shows some of the vast range of symbols available within the Georgia font (page: Symbols; sub-page: Miscellaneous Symbols). None of these symbols are available under LO via the Special Character dialog.

A similar huge range of glyphs extra to those offered by LO exist within the Arial font.

Indeed, as these are standard Unicode characters, they can exist within any document that supports Unicode + uses a font that contains glyphs for those characters. To make the point, here is  (U+263C) to  (U+2667):

☼☽☾☿♀♁♂♃♄♅♆♇:aries::taurus::gemini::cancer::leo::virgo::libra::scorpius::sagittarius::capricorn::aquarius::pisces:♔♕♖♗♘♙♚♛♜♝♞:chess_pawn::spades::heart:♢:clubs:♤:heart::diamonds:

Once you have the option to get access to any of these symbols, you can make easy access to them possible via Autocorrect:

(menu):ToolsAutocorrect Options...:

image description

Add your own shortcut for any particular symbol to the collection.

If this helps then please tick the answer (:heavy_check_mark:)

…and/or show you like it with an uptick ()

I got the autocorrect to work. But I can only do it by using some crazy abbreviation the sytstem cannot make sense of; that’s OK - but it only works when I have spaces around those acronyms - and that leaves me with spaces before the symbols. I don’;t want that. I want them written directly after a nu number. Any ideas that could be used to do this also?