£ - where is it!

My Apple keyboard (UK) works fine in Mac and Windows except I have no £ symbol when working in Windows and have to go through the Insert Symbol process.

Is there an easier way!

Peter H

 

Have a look at The Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. I've used it to look at some United Kingdom keyboard layouts. They all say that Shift-3 is for the pound symbol (unicode character A3). You could make a layout for your keyboard if one doesn't exist that matches your keyboard.

To set the keyboard layout in Windows XP, go to Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options -> Languages -> Details... -> Settings. Do you see English (United Kingdom) in the Installed services list? If not, then click Add, select Input Language English (United Kingdom) and set the Keyboard Layout/IME to one of the United Kingdom keyboard layouts.

If you have more than one Installed services, then you can set the default back in the Settings window and you can switch between them using the Language Bar in the Task Bar (check the Language Bar settings also in the Settings window).

If that works then ignore the rest of this post:

Does your Mac keyboard have a £ (pound) key? Do you know if PC keyboards have a £ (pound) key?

You could try the keyboard shortcuts in Parallels Desktop -> Preferences -> Keyboard. The keyboard profiles are stored at ~/Library/Preferences/Parallels. So you could add a keyboard shortcut using the Parallels UI, then if the Windows key isn't listed in the menu then you could edit the keyboard profile in a text editor and set the Windows key code. There are a list of keys in "/Library/Parallels/Parallels Service.app/Contents/Frameworks/ParallelsVirtualizationSDK.framework/Versions/6/Headers/PrlKeys.h". I'm not sure which one is for the pound key if there is one.