Software

Looking back at Microsoft PowerPoint Easter Eggs

By // September 17, 2010, 5:40 AM PST

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  • Hidden gems

    If you've been using computers for a long time, you know what the term Easter Egg means when related to software. 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.

    In the past, Microsoft’s developers used to go to great lengths when it came to secretly embedding Easter Eggs into their products. I stress the word past, because Microsoft now officially bans the practice for security reasons as part of their Trustworthy Computing initiative.

    The increase in the prevalence of malware led to the notion that undocumented code embedded into a major application could be used to compromise sensitive or confidential data. In fact, many companies and government offices forbid the use of software containing Easter Eggs for security reasons.

    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 PowerPoint 95, 97, and 2000.

  • PowerPoint 95 - Easter Egg #1

    To access the main Easter Egg in PowerPoint 95, you first open a Blank Presentation as you normally would. You then pull down the Help menu and select the About Microsoft PowerPoint command.When you see the About Microsoft PowerPoint dialog box, double click on the PowerPoint icon in the upper left corner.

  • You then see the About Microsoft PowerPoint dialog box, turn black and you’ll see a small animated white line shoot up from the bottom of the screen.

  • The line then changes to an orange color and explodes, almost like fireworks.

  • The colorful explosion then forms the name of the team.

  • The explosion and fireworks combination repeats multiple times and displays the names of all the folks on the team. You can use the right and left arrow keys to speed up or slow down the animations. When the roster is complete, you see the regular About Microsoft PowerPoint dialog box again.

  • PowerPoint 95 - Easter Egg #2

    A second Easter Egg in PowerPoint 95 is accessed by pressing [Ctrl] [Alt] [Shift] and clicking three times on the horizontal line in the About Microsoft PowerPoint dialog box. This Easter Egg again turns About Microsoft PowerPoint dialog box black and displays little phrase and the name of a single developer, ImranQ, along with a date. The logo graphic gradually slides across the dialog box from the left to the right. When the logo hits the right edge, you see the regular About Microsoft PowerPoint dialog box again.

  • PowerPoint 97 - Easter Egg #1

    To access the main Easter Egg in PowerPoint 97, you open a Blank Presentation as you normally would. You then pull down the Help menu and select the About Microsoft PowerPoint command.When you see the About Microsoft PowerPoint dialog box, double click on the PowerPoint icon in the upper left corner.

  • You then see the About Microsoft PowerPoint dialog box turn black and you'll see a small animated white line shoot up from the bottom of the screen.

  • The line then explodes like fireworks, but remains white rather than turning colors

  • The explosion then begins to form the name of the team.

  • When the explosion subsides, the name of the team remains on the screen for a few moments.

  • The explosion and fireworks combination repeats multiple times and displays the names of all the folks on the team. You can use the right and left arrow keys to speed up or slow down the animations and the up and down arrow keys to zoom in and out. When the roster is complete, you see the regular About Microsoft PowerPoint dialog box again.

  • PowerPoint 97 - Easter Egg #2

    To access the second Easter Egg embedded in PowerPoint 97, you open a special presentation called Ppcentrl.pps located in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office folder.

  • When you see the Warning dialog box, you must click the Enable Macros button.

  • You then see the PowerPoint Central presentation. This special presentation, which was also available on the Tools menu, was designed to provide the user with tips and tricks as well as highlight the extra PowerPoint content on the Office 97 CD and the Internet.

  • At this point, you right click the tool bar and select the Customize command. When the Customize dialog box appears, you select Macros ion the Categories panel and then select EasterEgg in the Commands panel.

  • You then drag the EasterEgg command and drop it on the toolbar.

  • After clicking the EasterEgg command, you then see a dialog box that displays little phrase and the name of a single developer, Imran Qureshi.

  • PowerPoint 97 - Easter Egg #3

    A third Easter Egg in PowerPoint 97 is accessed from the About Microsoft PowerPoint dialog boxby pressing [Ctrl] [Alt] [Shift] and clicking three times on the horizontal line. The About Microsoft PowerPoint dialog box black and displays little phrase and the name of a single developer, ImranQ, along with a date. The logo graphic gradually slides across the dialog box from the left to the right. When the logo hits the right edge, you see the regular About Microsoft PowerPoint dialog box again.

    Hmmm… this Imran fellow must have spent a lot of time working alone on the PowerPoint 97 development project.

  • PowerPoint 2000 Easter Egg

    There is only one Easter Egg in PowerPoint 2000. Wonder what happened to Imran?

    To access the PowerPoint 2000 Easter Egg, you open a Blank Presentation as you normally would. You then pull down the Help menu and select the About Microsoft PowerPoint command.When you see the About Microsoft PowerPoint dialog box, double click on the PowerPoint icon in the upper left corner.

  • You then see the About Microsoft PowerPoint dialog box, turn black and then some letters will begin swirling in from the bottom right.

  • As the letters assemble in the middle of the screen, they will spell out the team name.

  • A moment later, the letters will explode one by one.

  • You then see the names of each team member come onto the screen using various animation techniques that unfortunately were not part of PowerPoint’s default set of animations. You can use the right and left arrow keys to speed up or slow down the animations.

    Oh, yes, Imran Qureshi was indeed on the PowerPoint 2000 development team.

  • By Greg Shultz

Hidden gems

If you've been using computers for a long time, you know what the term Easter Egg means when related to software. 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.

In the past, Microsoft’s developers used to go to great lengths when it came to secretly embedding Easter Eggs into their products. I stress the word past, because Microsoft now officially bans the practice for security reasons as part of their Trustworthy Computing initiative.

The increase in the prevalence of malware led to the notion that undocumented code embedded into a major application could be used to compromise sensitive or confidential data. In fact, many companies and government offices forbid the use of software containing Easter Eggs for security reasons.

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 PowerPoint 95, 97, and 2000.

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By Greg Shultz

Greg Shultz is a freelance Technical Writer. Previously, he has worked as Documentation Specialist in the software industry, a Technical Support Specialist in educational industry, and a Technical Journalist in the computer publishing industry.