Wacky MS Word trick & other "Easter Eggs"

What

the.....?

Where do you FIND these tricks, Craven?

From a deep love of all things related to computeria.

You'd be suprised at all the weird hidden things that are in MS Office programs.

The most famous one is one called The Hall of Tortured Souls.

It works in old versions of Excel ('95).

1. Open a new file.
2. Scroll down until you see row 95.
3. Click on the row 95 button, this highlights the whole row
4. Press tab, to move to the second column.
5. Now, move your mouse and click on help, THEN about Microsoft Excel
6. Press ctrl-alt-shift and click on the tech support button simultaneously.
7. A WINDOW WILL APPEAR, TITLE: THE HALL OF TORTURED SOULS you will see something freaky! it has a doom style format and you can walk all around the hall (using your arrow keys)...and on the sides of the walls are the names of the tortured souls....
8. NOW WALK UP THE STAIRS AND THEN COME BACK DOWN, FACE THE BLANK WALL AND THEN TYPE IN EXCELKFA.

This will open the blank wall to reveal another secret passage, walk through the passage and DO NOT fall off (this is the hard part!), when you get to the end, you will see something really, really eerie.... (This is REALLY there! I haven't been able to reach the end of this VERY narrow passage though.... - WILANT) Since you likely don't have the old excel here are some pictures of this weird backdoor:

Here's another computer Easter Egg (that's what these "bugs" are called).

For Word 2000

1: Press the F1 key or click the Office Assistant button.
2: Under the "What would you like to do?", type "Cast".
3: Click Search.
4: Select the "Microsoft Office 2000 user assistance staff" topic.
5: Click the graphic in the Microsoft Word Help screen.

Here's one for Excell 2000. It's a bit tricky.

1: Open Excel.
2: In a blank worksheet, select "Save as" and choose "Save as web page".
3: Click on Publish and Add interactivity.
4: Save as any name you like.
5: Load in the page with MS Internet Explorer, Excel will appear in the webpage.
6: Go to row 2000 Column WC
7: Highlight all of row 2000 and press Tab to make column wc the active column.
8: Hold the keys Ctrl, Alt, Shift and click on the Office Icon.
9: Phew.. Use the arrow keys to drive your car.
The "0" key to drop paint slicks.
The spacebar to shoot.
The "H" key for headlights.
NOTE: you need DirectX for this to work.

Here's one for

Windows 2000

1: Right click on the desktop and choose Properties.
2: Go to the Screensaver tab.
3: Select the 3-D text screensaver and open the properties.
4: In the text box, type "volcano"

More from a quick search (there are whole sites devoted to these eggs, I've contributed eggs to many of them):

Windows 95: First load Windows 95 and get to the Desktop. Right click on the Desktop to open the pop-up menu. Select New and then select Folder.

Name the new folder "and now, the moment you've all been waiting for" (without quotes). After this, right click on the folder and select the rename option. Rename the folder "we proudly present for your viewing pleasure." Again, rename the folder to "The Microsoft Windows 95 Product Team!" Open the folder and the Windows 95 credits will be displayed in an interesting multimedia fashion. For your information, the sound file you may hear during the "Easter Egg" is called CLOUDS.MID. This is a Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) file that allows computers to store and play musical information -- most, but not all, computers support this file type. It can be obtained for your own use over the Internet.

Also, the folder will stay around, so anytime you want to view the credits again, all you have to do is reopen the folder.

Windows 3.1: Load Microsoft Windows and the Program Manager screen. Second,once you are at this point, hold down the control (Ctrl) and Shift keys simultaneously. Thirdly, without releasing Control and Shift, select Help from the Program Manager menu and select the menu item "About Program Manager." Fourth, double click on any part of the "Microsoft Windows" flag. Repeat steps three and four. Remember to hold down Control and Shift. After doing this, an animated flag will appear.

If you repeat steps 3 and 4 again, a carton character representing a member of the Microsoft brass will reveal a list of e-mails to the people who developed Windows 3.1.

MacOS (System 7.5.2): Open Note Pad. Type "secret about box" (without quotes). Highlight the text "secret about box" and drag it to the desktop. Repeat this procedure again only hold down "p" key whiled dragging it to the desktop.

Microsoft Windows 95 Plus: Open the Control Panel. Select the Desktop Themes Applet (program within a program). Optional: Save the current Theme (Group of Windows 95 Settings, e.g. TempThm.theme). Select the Inside Your Computer Theme. Make sure the "Icons" Setting is selected. Press Apply and/or OK. Start a program (e.g., WordPerfect) or do something else to make the hourglass appear. One should see the numbers "101011" scroll across a monitor icon of the cursor. The ASCII character for "101011" in decimal is "+".

Microsoft Word 6.0 for Windows: Start Microsoft Word (Version 6.0). Create a new document (Control+N). Type the text "t3!" (no quotes). Make the whole word bold (Select the text and then hit Control+B). From the Format menu, choose Autoformat. In the Autoformat box, first click OK and then Accept. Click on About Microsoft Word (Under the Help menu). Click on Microsoft Word symbol in upper left hand corner. See the developer credits. At the end of the credits (This takes approximately one to two minutes) you (actually, the person it is registered to) will receive a personal thanks from the development team.

Microsoft Word 7.0 for Windows 95:

Start Microsoft Word for Windows 95 (Version 7.0). Create a new document (Control+N). Type the text "Blue" (no quotes). Select the text and open Format Character.... In the Format box select the Bold option and the blue color. Type one space after the word "Blue." Click on About Microsoft Word (under the Help menu). Click on the graphics in about box. Watch the developer credits, and at the end it will thank you.

Microsoft Excel: Start Microsoft Excel. Load a new worksheet or workbook. Select any cell. Type 1.4073748835532, and press Enter. It should return 0.64. Who said computers are immune from mathematical errors?

Corel Draw: Start Corel Draw (version 5.0). Click on About Corel DRAW!... (under the Help menu). Double click on one of the icons in the box (i.e., the balloon or the Corel icon). You will see the Corel Balloon and icon of a hand with a lever. Click the left mouse button and hold. This fires the balloon and it will rise with a banner containing developer credits. If the mouse is released, the balloon will fall. Try it different days and at different times of the day.

jeezumcrow, Craven!



I'm gonna be here a while.....

He he, have fun!

Craven- Do you have

any idea what you have started? I had no idea about "Easter Eggs". Since I read your post I have been obsessively checking

egg sites!

Have you seen this one?

http://www.eeggs.com/

Yup that's a good site.

If you come across some good eggs let us know!

BTW I'll make some eggs for this site. Lots of sites have eggs too.

Abuzz has an egg, google has an egg. There are many.

I'll make a cool one for the new site when I have time.

I don't know if

Abuzz "has" an egg, but it LAYS enough eggs to be a chicken!

"Those bugs are called features ma'am."

Abuzz has an egg where if you use a search query (I don't remember what it is) in the member search you will see a picture of the Abuzz staff (back when they had staff).

They put the egg there just when they all got laid off, I think the picture was of the farewell party.

Still I like my fired egg guess regarding featured interactions!!!

This is what I got with the rand thing in my microsoft word:

"El veloz murciélago hindú comía cardillo y kiwi" repeated over and over for over 200 pages, I suppose you got the fox jumping over the dog. Am I right?

This is what I got: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Yes - but none of this explains how you people find them, Craven!

You mean you actually wander around your computer pressing weird things until something strange happens?

The Abuzz one is soooooo sad! Waaaaaaaaah.

I assume the lost souls are the Microsoft developers? They look pretty happy.

Especially for lost souls.

Deb,

Most people find them by hearing about them from others (or on sites devoted to them).

It's also more obvious when you are looking at source code than from the end user interface.

Why is the Abuzz one sad? Because it was a "goodbye egg"?