Learn about the Easter Eggs in Microsoft Word

Even Easter Eggs Can Be Political!

The last thing you would think about Easter eggs Microsoft Word has is politics. Still, politics is the name of the game in almost everything in our society, so why not your word processor too? To find out what political leanings Microsoft Word has, type in the words liberal and conservative. When you run the thesaurus option on liberal, you get positive words like open-minded, broadminded, moderate, noninterventionist, and others.

Now run the thesaurus check on conservative and see what you get.

Negative words like traditional, conformist, unadventurous, old-fashioned, and more come up. This political bias is a fun thing that you can use to spice up office conversation on a slow day.

Pinball (Microsoft Word 97)

Who knew that Microsoft Word could be so much fun? If you have Word 97, you can play pinball by typing Blue into a new document. Select the word Blue with the mouse and then click Font on the Format menu. Set the style of the font to Bold and set the color of the word to blue. Press the space bar after the Word. Go to the Help menu and select About. Hold the Ctrl and Shift keys down, and then simultaneously left-click the Word banner. When the game starts, use the Z key to control the flipper on the left and the M key for the one on the right. Press the Esc key to end the game.

Typing Exercises

Among the Easter eggs Microsoft Word has is hidden a “typing exercise” that creates varying lengths of rambling text. It is hard to stumble across this Easter egg by accident because you have to type in a formula. Enter =rand(x,y) in a document where “x” is a number from 1 to 200 and “y” is a number from 1 to 99. “X” refers to the number of repetitions and “y” is the number of times in a row. Trying to visualize this is a bit difficult, so go ahead and try it. In this example, we’ll type in =rand(100,49) into a new Microsoft Word document.

Now, press enter at the end of the line. You now see a long document of rambling discussions about document formatting.

Go ahead, play around with the numbers and see the different results you get.

Clover Cursor

Another one of the Easter eggs Microsoft Word users might enjoy is the ability to change the cursor to a four leaf clover. To do this, open Word, hold down the Ctrl and Alt buttons and press + at the same time. Your cursor is now changed!

Safety Tip (versions before Word 2007)

To get some safety advice from Easter eggs Microsoft Word displays, open Word and go to the “Choose Assistant” option. Select the option for the assistant to provide a daily tip when the program starts. Close Word and then reopen it. Repeat this process several times until you get the safety tip, “You can hurt yourself if you run with scissors”

Why the Coolest Easter Eggs Microsoft Word Has Are in Older Versions

Apparently under fire for wasting time at the office, the majority of the coolest Easter eggs Microsoft Word had were eliminated starting in 2002. Still, as you have seen here, a few Easter eggs remain even in the 2007 version of Word.

Image Credits

Screenshots taken by Bruce Tyson.