Cant make (£) Pound sign in Excel!?

[paperclip]

I cant make a (£) pound symbol/sign in excel, instead all I get is a
hash (#).

So when I press: 'SHIFT' and '3' I am supposed to get '£' but instead I
get '#'.

Some other keys dont work although most of the other Shift functions do
what their supposed to e.g. I can still do a dollar sign ($), percentage
sign (%) etc. All keys work fine in other apps eg. notepad. Keyboard
setting is still the set to UK format.

Any ideas?

 

[davesexcel]

You could go to
Format=>Cells=>currency=>Symbols
Select the symbol you want

 

[Ryan Jones]

Insert...Symbol

 

[paperclip]

Those are good short-term solutions, but my main problem is that my
keyboard settings seem to be messed up in Excel, and Excel only.

I am using a UK keyboard which would usually require you to press Shift
and number 3, located above the letters 'W' and 'E' on the keyboard (i.e
not on the numpad) to create a £ sign but this is not the case, instead
I get a hash (#) symbol.

Also I have noticed, that Shift and number 2, located above letters 'Q'
and 'W' on the keyboard (i.e not on the numpad) should give me some
inverted commas (") but instead it give me an '@' symbol!

Anymore ideas on how to correct this?

Many thanks for the replies so far.

 

[John.Bob]

I just had the same problem, and discovered the solution by fiddling around.
As the question is 4 years old, this is 'for the record'.

In Win XP: Control Panel> Regional settings> /Languages\ tab> [Details] button
Should bring up "Text and input languages" menu
I had both English UK keyboard and an English US keyboard options enabled*

[Language Bar] > "Show the Language Bar on the Desktop"
Switch your task focus to the offending Excel window.
Select English UK keyboard from language bar

If you never use a US keyboard, you can probably prevent this ever happening again by going into the "Text and input languages" menu again and removing the US keyboard option. If this leaves only one language option, the language bar will disappear, otherwise if you want it to disappear you will have to select the [language bar] button again and untick the display option.

For Windows beyond XP, I suggest you search the Web for "Language Bar" and do something similar to the above.

* If you don't have these options enabled, I suggest you enable them in order to be able to select the UK option for Excel, then afterwards remove the US option completely again.