Looking back at Microsoft Outlook Easter Eggs
Image 1 of 7
By Greg Shultz
By Greg Shultz
If you’ve been using computers for a long time, you know that an Easter Egg is a small program that is hidden deep inside of an application and is designed by the application’s developers as a way of displaying their names—very similar to the credits that you see at the end of a movie. However, uncovering the Easter Egg is tricky as it almost always involves performing a series of very intricate and non-intuitive steps.
Because of the increase in malware, Microsoft now officially bans the practice embedding Easter Eggs in their software as part of their Trustworthy Computing initiative. However, in their heyday, Microsoft’s developers created some really elaborate Easter Eggs. In this gallery, I’ll show you the Easter Eggs that they embedded into the Office versions of Outlook 97 and Outlook 2000.
In case you may be wondering, Office 95 did not include a version of Outlook since Windows 95 already came with an email client called Microsoft Exchange, which did not have an Easter Egg. Now, there was an Outlook 98 that was released as a free download upgrade for Outlook 97 but it was completely impendent of Microsoft Office and I no longer have a copy. However, from what I remember, its Easter Egg was identical to the one in Outlook 97.
Outlook 97
Outlook 97
As you may have noticed, at the bottom of the credits dialog box is the prompt Want more? Click here. When you clicked this link you were connected to the Microsoft Outlook Team Web site at www.creditsite.com/outlook, where you could see pictures of the folks on the Microsoft Outlook Team. However, that site is long gone. Fortunately, it is still available in the archive on the Wayback Machine site.
Outlook 2000
Outlook 2000
When you’re done playing, you could click the u201cwould you like more?u201d link. When you did so, you were connected to the Microsoft Outlook Team Web site at www.creditsite.com/outlook, where you could see pictures of the folks on the Microsoft Outlook Team. However, that site is long gone. Fortunately, it is still available in the archive on the Wayback Machine site.
Outlook Express 4.0
Outlook Express 4.0
Not to be outdone by the Outlook team, the Outlook Express team also go into the Easter Egg business and embedded their credits in Outlook Express 4.0. However, they were the only Outlook Express team to create an Easter Egg—none existed in Outlook Express 5 and Outlook Express 6 came out after the no Easter Egg mandate from Microsoft’s higher ups. To access the Outlook Express 4.0 Easter Egg, you launch Outlook Express as you normally would. You then click on the Compose Message button
Outlook Express 4.0
Outlook Express 4.0
When you see the New Message window, pull down the Format menu and enable the Rich Text (HTML) option—if it isn’t enabled already
Outlook Express 4.0
Outlook Express 4.0
When you return to the main Outlook Express window, select Outlook Express in the Outlook Bar. When you see the Outlook Express splash screen, position your mouse in the middle of the window in between the icons, and click on any empty white space. Then type the word about.
Outlook Express 4.0
Outlook Express 4.0
When all the names are in place, the screen will reorient to the top and begin scrolling down and then up again so that you can see all the names.
