Here are some weird things about Excel that I have not tried myself. Please do not email any of the folks below! If you have a burning question, email it to me and I will ask them.
-Eric
Sal, The following appeared in a mailing list of graduates from my alma mater in Greece, in March. I have not verified it myself since it refers to Office 95, not 97, and I don't have the older version. It refers to a Doom-style 3d graphics engine within Excel; apparently this got upgraded to a flight sim in Excel 97. Vasilis > 1. Open a new file. > 2. Scroll down until you see row 95. > 3. Click on the row 95 button, this highlights the whole row > 4.Press tab, to move to the second column. > 5. Now, move your mouse and click on help THEN about Microsoft Excel > 6. Press ctrl-alt-shift and click on the tech support button > simultaneously. > 7. A WINDOW WILL APPEAR, TITLE : THE HALL OF TORTURED SOULS. > This is really eerie okay...it has a doom style format and you can walk > all around the hall (use your arrow keys)...and on the sides of the > walls are the names of the tortured souls.... > 8. NOW WALK UP THE STAIRS AND THEN COME BACK DOWN, FACE THE BLANK WALL > AND THEN TYPE IN EXCELKFA. > This will open the blank wall to reveal another secret passage, walk > through the passage and DO NOT fall off (this is the hard part!), when you > get to the end, you will see something really, really eerie.... Subject: excel test flight ok...since numerous responses occurred, here's how to test fly excel 97: Start up MS Excel 97, and open a NEW worksheet (by clicking NEW on the FILE MENU). Now, press the "F5" key and a dialogue box will pop up with the cursor in the "Reference" field. Type in exactly X97:L97 in the reference field. That's capital X and captial L. Now, hit the tab key, and cell "M97" ought to be highlighted. Now, hold the control (ctrl) and shift keys and click on the chart wizard icon. The chart wizard icon should be on the menu bar at the top, with the blue-yellow-red bar chart. The screen will go blank for a moment, and the flight simulator will come up. You fly by moving the mouse left or right and the left and right mouse buttons to accelerate and decelerate. If you fly around, you will find various blocks with the "credits" to the programmers....and there are many people listed. The opening credits, if you can manage to fly there and stop to see it scroll by, has some weird message "in the beginning there was nothing...then there was Excel 97" followed by group names and programmer names." sal -------- Hi, I worked at Microsoft in the Excel group for 3 1/2 years, and there are cool gimicks like this in Excel 5, Excel 95, and Excel 97: Excel 5: 1) Maximize everything. 2) Create a customized toolbar with just one button (the one that looks like a deck of cards). 3) Make sure that toolbar is floating over the spreadsheet. 4) Hold down Ctrl and Shift and left click the button. Now you will see the names of the developers one at a time, morphing from one to the other. Excel 95: 1) Select the 95th row of the spreadsheet. 2) Hit Tab so that 95 B is the active cell (but the whole row is still selected). 3) Bring up the Help/About Excel dialog. 4) Hold down Ctrl and Shift and left click on the Product Support button. Now, a doom-like window will come up and you can move around with the arrows. If you walk up the flight of stairs, you see the credits. 5) Move back to the beginning. 6) Type in "XLKFA". (A popular e-mail going around about this gets this wrong!) Now, a secret passage opens. If you can traverse a ledge without falling off, you will get to a back room with a picture of the Excel 95 developers. It's blurry, but I'm the one in the orange T-shirt! Excel 97: 1) Select the cells 97 L..97 X of the spreadsheet. 2) Hit Tab so that 97 M is the active cell (but L..X are still selected). 3) Hold down Ctrl and Shift and left click on the Chart button. Now you will find yourself flying over an unusual looking terrain. Use the mouse. Somewhere, you can find the credits scrolling by on a screen! -Carl On Thu, 4 Jun 1998, Sal Stolfo wrote: > I know this might seem strange, but... > > Are any of you aware of an embedded flight simulator within Excel 97? > > I have come to learn recently that thru a complex sequence of commands > within Excel 97, you can launch a flight simulator. And when you fly around > you can hit upon a scolling credits bar that lists all programmers who > were involved with its implementation. > > If you knew about this, can you please let me know how you came to know of > it..and how widely known it may be? > > Thanks in advance. > > sal > > p.s. If you want to see it in action, let me know and I'll give you the > command sequence... > > Subject: MS Easter Egg sillyness. This is another MS word easter egg similar to the kind that was circulated earlier. Worth a smile at any rate. > 1) open a new word document > 2) From the Tools Menu, select 'language' - 'set language' > 3) Choose English (United States) > 4) In the document, type 'I'd like to see Bill Gates dead' > 5) Highlight the sentence, and consult the thesaurus (In Tools -Language). -michael