If you want to download and try Lotus Symphony, IBM’s free office productivity suite, be prepared to be treated as a criminal suspect. IBM won’t let you have the installation kit until they’ve checked you out. You have to hand over your name, country and email address and then you get the message:

“This product is subject to strict US export control laws. Prior to providing access, we must validate whether you are eligible to receive it under an available US export authorization. Your request is being reviewed. Upon completion of this review, you will be contacted if we are able to give access. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

It’s a word processor, not the designs for a nuclear bomb. No, they’re easier to obtain.

After waiting a day you then get an email entitled “IBM Lotus Symphony 1 failure”

“Your business with IBM Lotus Symphony 1 is very important to us. We are sorry that your previous transaction with us did not go through. We have fixed this error in your account. Please return to the IBM Lotus Symphony 1 web site to resubmit your transaction. Thank you and sorry for the inconvenience.”

What failure? What error? What account? At least they include a URL in the email to get you back to the download page, where you have to give you name, email address and country again.

What a palaver.

I’m often amazed when watching people use Excel how difficult they seem to find navigating around their workbooks. They’re always using the mouse and reaching for the scrollbars to drag the sheet around to find a particular cell. If you’re lucky they know to use the mouse wheel to scroll. If you’re unlucky they use the mouse wheel to scroll long distances which can be tedious in the extreme.

Excel, like all good applications can be used entirely from the keyboard and often this is much faster than reaching for the mouse.

Everyone should know that the arrow (cursor) keys move the current focus or insertion point left, right, up or down and I hope they know that holding the Shift key down at the same time selects the characters, cells, etc in the given direction. Far fewer people, however, seem to know that holding the Ctrl+Arrow will take you to the edge of the current contiguous block of data, that Ctrl+Home takes you to the top left cell or that Ctrl+End moves focus to the bottom right cell of the current worksheet.

Here’s a quick summary of useful navigation keys for Excel.

In “End Mode” the next arrow key moves the focus to that edge of the current data range, the same as Ctrl+Arrow. If you press End and then Shift+Arrow, you select the cells to that edge of the data range, the same as Ctrl+Shift+Arrow.

To select the whole of the current data range, press Ctrl+Shift+* or Ctrl+A. Ctrl+A is a little more intelligent as it selects just table data, if focus is in a table. Pressing it a second time includes the table header. Pressing it a third time will select the whole sheet.

Bluetooth is the bane of my life at the moment. Designed to make quick and easy wireless connections between disparate devices it often fails to be quick, easy or indeed connect.

I have Jabra BT620 headphones for listening to music while I work without disturbing my colleagues. Every time I use them they connect in mono using the “handsfree” profile which gives tinny monophonic sound suitable for phone calls. To get stereo I have to go through the pairing process. Every time!

The Pioneer radio/SatNav system in our car will connect using Bluetooth to Mike’s phone to route phone calls to the car’s speakers and microphone. It will connect to my phone too but only so the phone can provide audio from its media player, a function it won’t do from Mike’s. What is even more annoying is that both phones are HTC TyTN II. Why can’t they both connect using both profiles? It is a mystery.