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Asked: 2026-05-14T23:37:37+00:00

I’m running Mac OSX on a MacBookPro (UK keyboard). I run windows XP under

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I’m running Mac OSX on a MacBookPro (UK keyboard). I run windows XP under parallels in a VM. I run Visual Studio .Net 2003 and 2008 in XP in the VM when i need to. I have English United Kingdom and English United states keyboards setup in XP. (they switch sometimes for no apparent reason)

There is no hash “#” key on my mac’s keyboard. However, in OSX I can get a hash with an alt+3 key combination. But In Windows XP… I can not make a “#” character.

I can go to the character map in windows and copy a hash.. switch into OSX and copy a hash.. search in code and copy a hash.. but I can not make a hash in XP using my keyboard without typing U+0023: … which you can imagine is annoying.

coding anything with hash symbols is becoming a choir.

Anyone got any advice or key mapping tricks I can use to get hash characters working in XP using my mac UK keyboard?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Switch your Mac keyboard to US layout, so that you get a # on shift-3 instead of alt-3 (you then get £ using alt-3).

    System Preferences => Language & Text => Input Sources

    If you enable both British English and US English layouts and enable the input menu then you can quickly and easily switch between the two layouts as needed.

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