How do I change the dollar symbol on a keyboard to a British pound?

Q I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop that I bought in America, where I was living. It has a dollar ($) symbol above the 4 key, but no pound sterling (£) symbol. Now that I’m in the UK it would be useful to have the pound key. Is there a way I can add this?
John Russell

A If you mean the physical key then you will need to contact Toshiba to see if the company is able to sell you one as a spare part. You will want a replacement 3 key, because that is where the pound symbol resides on UK keyboard layouts (in place of the hash symbol on American keyboards).

We suspect, though, that you merely want the ability to type the pound symbol. And for this nothing more than a simple software change is required, to alter the keyboard layout from US to UK.

You didn’t tell us the operating system used on your Toshiba Satellite but we know that your particular model originally came with Windows Vista, so we will guess that is what’s still running. To make the change, click Start followed by Control Panel and click the ‘Change keyboards or other input methods’ link under ‘Clock, Language and Region’.

On the Regional and Language Options dialogue box click the Keyboards and Languages tab followed by the Change keyboards button.

In the Text Services and Input Languages dialogue box, check the Installed services list. If English (United Kingdom) is not there, click Add, locate and select it from the Add Input Language list and click OK.

Back in the Text Services and Input Languages, select English (United Kingdom) from the menu that drops down below the ‘Default input language’ heading and click OK.

Now restart any applications and you will be able to type a pound symbol by holding down Shift and tapping 3.