Software

Take a look back at Microsoft Word Easter Eggs

By // December 20, 2012, 5:02 PM PST

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  • Microsoft Office secrets

    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.

    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. As such, 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 Word 95, 97, and 2000.

    This gallery was originally published in August 2010.

  • Word 95 Easter Egg

    Word 95
    Launch Word as you normally would and type the word Blue at the top of the document. Then, select the text, pull down the Format menu and select the Font command. When you see the Font dialog box, select the Bold font style, change the color of the font to Blue, and click OK.

  • Word 95 Easter Egg

    You then type one space after the word Blue.

  • Word 95 Easter Egg

    Pull down the Help menu and select the About Microsoft Word command. When you see the About Microsoft Word dialog box, double click on the Word graphic.

  • Word 95 Easter Egg

    You’ll then see a black window appear over top of the About Microsoft Word dialog box containing just the graphic.

  • Word 95 Easter Egg

    In a moment the graphic begins to scroll upwards and you’ll see the names of the developers.

  • Word 95 Easter Egg

    At the very end of the credits, you’ll see your name appear. Here you can see my name appears right after the Product Support Team.

  • Word 97 Easter Egg

    Word 97
    Launch Word as you normally do and type the word Blue at the top of the document. Then, select the text, pull down the Format menu and select the Font command. When you see the Font dialog box, select the Bold font style, change the color of the font to Blue, and click OK.

  • Word 97 Easter Egg

    Then type one space after the word Blue.

  • Word 97 Easter Egg

    At this point you pull down the Help menu and select the About Microsoft Word command. When you see the About Microsoft Word dialog box, hold down [Ctrl] [Shift] and click on the Word icon graphic.

  • Word 97 Easter Egg

    You’ll then see a black window appear over top of the About Microsoft Word dialog box and a very rudimentary pinball game will appear. You use the Z and M keys to activate the flippers. While you play the game, the names of the Word 97 developers scroll up the screen. To exit the game, you press [Esc].

  • Word 2000 - Easter Egg

    Word 2000 - 1
    Launch Word as you normally do and press [F1] to display the "Office Assistant".

  • Word 2000 - Easter Egg

    In the “What would you like to do?" prompt type the word Cast and click Search.

  • Word 2000 - Easter Egg

    In the subsequent “What would you like to do?" prompt, click the "Microsoft Office 2000 User Assistance Staff" topic.

  • Word 2000 - Easter Egg

    When the Microsoft Word Help panel appears, double click the graphic.

  • Word 2000 - Easter Egg

    When you do, you’ll see a quick animation and a list of all the people that developed the Help system in Office 2000.

  • Word 2000 - Easter Egg

    Word 2000 - 2
    Launch Word as you normally do.

  • Word 2000 - Easter Egg

    Press Alt F11 to start Microsoft Visual Basic.

  • Word 2000 - Easter Egg

    Right click on the toolbar and select Customize from the menu. Then, pull down the Help menu and right click on the About Microsoft Visual Basic command. When you do, you’ll see a menu editing interface.

  • Word 2000 - Easter Egg

    Change the About Microsoft Visual Basic command to Show VB Credits and then close the Customize dialog box

  • Word 2000 - Easter Egg

    Pull down the Help menu and select the new Show VB Credits command.

  • Word 2000 - Easter Egg

    When you do, a window will appear with a cloud background and music will begin playing. As it does, four colored blocks will float around the screen while the developers’ names scroll upward across the screen.

  • By Greg Shultz

Microsoft Office secrets

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.

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. As such, 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 Word 95, 97, and 2000.

This gallery was originally published in August 2010.

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About 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.