Daily Dose of Excel

My Web site has a page that describes how to access the Easter Eggs in Excel 95, 97, 2000, and 2002. Greg Schultz, at Tech Republic, takes it one step further and provides lots of screen captures: Looking back at Microsoft Excel Easter Eggs.

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.

Here's an example: The Hall of Tortured Souls, featured in Excel 95.

Andrew from Andrew’s Excel Tips has written a game called Battleships.

Fire in a twelve-by-twelve grid to sink ships in as few shots as possible. It took me 83 shots to sink them all. Not too good, I suspect.

Download the game here.

I’ve linked to Gijs ter Beek’s Shoot-The-Bird game before. Now Gijs has a newly renovated web site at http://www.gamesxl.tk/.

It’s a really nice looking site and it showcases his talent in Excel development. If you want to know what’s possible in Excel gaming, this is the site to visit.

This is a great game program written by fellow MVP Bernie Deitrick. You get a box of letters from which you try to find as many words as you can. It tells you how many words there are and has an option to solve it. You can also use a custom dictionary instead of the standard one. Check it out.

Download Word Match Game.zip

Andrew over at Andrew’s Excel Tips has made a Mastermind game in Excel. Try it out.

Andy provides a workbook that attempts to solve the problem presented here. I don’t know if the logic is right, but the workbook is cool, and worth a look.

Download Andy’s Best Choice