um no more! Getting smart with autocorrect, for scientists

Had enough of searching for μ, °, β, ζ, etc in the symbols or special characters dialogue boxes of word or open office write? There is an easier way!

This already exists elsewhere on the internet, I'm basically paraphrasing from a combo of the office website and an open office blog. I thought it might be useful for other scientists to see these pages distilled down to a science specific version so here you go!

MS word (this should work equally well in old word and Word 2007)
1. go to the insert tab, click symbol. The symbol dialogue box/window should appear. click on the symbols or special characters tab in Word 2007.
2. find the μ (mu) symbol (under greek alphabet) or whatever symbol you are pining for. click on it, then click the autocorrect button. The autocorrect window will appear.
3. Your μ should appear under "with". Click plain text next to "with" and edit the with box to your desired result (e.g. μM).
4. To the left of the "with" box is the "replace" box, type whatever you want to replace with μM in this box. e.g. um.
5. click add, and ok to exit the window. Test it!

Note there is a potential for confusion in the um department (μm vs μM). You can only set one up to autocorrect, however once it is autocorrected you can manually replace the m with M or vice versa if need be. Or you can set up to replace \mu and with the symbol alone. Up to you!

Open Office write: (NOTE: this *should* work, but it didn't work for me. I'll see if I can find more on this, might be that my version of writer has a bug)
1. Under the insert tab, click special characters. In the dialogue box that appears, select and insert the special character of your choice into the document, press ok to exit the box. Note μ is under the subset basic greek, and ° and serveral other useful symbols are under subset Latin-1.
2. Select the symbol.
3. Go to the tools tab, then click autocorrect options. In the dialogue box that opens up, your symbol will be in the "with" box. If it isn't, go back to step 2 and try again.
4. Type the string of text you want to replace in the "replace" box, and edit the with box if necessary. Click new to add the new autocorrection, and then ok.
5. test it.