Microsoft Easter Eggs : Games hidden in MS Office Apps

There have always been some interesting findings about Microsoft early products. Most popular of them were Easter Eggs in which there were some games and other interesting stuffs hidden inside the Microsoft products. Though Microsoft formally stopped including these in its programs as part of its Trustworthy Computing Initiative in 2002.

When programmers get bored out while developing a program, they tend to amuse themselves by hiding games or scrolling credits somewhere within their programs. Well, it seems being a programmer at Microsoft had been a pretty boring job in early years, considering almost every Microsoft Office program has at least one hidden Easter egg.

Most of these easter eggs were present in Microsoft office 95, 97 and 2000. Here is a list of some of them :

Microsoft Office 95 : 

The tip of the day sometimes would display the following fun and inspirational tips. They could also be viewed in the help file.

• If you do your best, whatever happens will be for the best.
• Things that go away by themselves can come back by themselves.
• Plaid shirts and striped pants rarely make a positive fashion statement.
• You should never dive into murky waters.
• It's never too late to learn to play the piano.
• You can hurt yourself if you run with scissors.
• You should never look directly at the sun.
• This is the last tip.

Microsoft Office 97 : 
There were a number of games hidden with all the office products. Some of them were :

• Microsoft Excel contained a hidden flight simulator.
• Microsoft Word contained a hidden pinball game.
• Microsoft Access contained a hidden simulation of the Magic 8 Ball toy

Microsoft Office 2000 : 
Following this tradition of hiding games, using Microsoft Excel 2000 and the Microsoft Office Web Components, a small 3-D game called "Dev Hunter" (inspired by Spy Hunter) is accessible.DirectX must be installed for this to work, and it is incompatible with certain service pack upgrades. 

The list is long. The details on how to access these and some other easter eggs are listed here.