Did you know that many Windows 10 Easter Eggs are hiding in plain sight? Microsoft may still become bigger than Apple, Amazon, and Google. This means more people will continue to buy and enjoy Office products.
Since Windows understands fun, they placed hidden secrets in Microsoft Office for the curious to follow. Have you figured out these Easter Eggs yet? If you want to check that you have, read on.
1. God Mode
Let’s start our list with a useful Easter Egg for Windows 10. Some also know God Mode as the Windows Master Control Panel. Yet, let’s be honest; God Mode sounds far better and more Easter Egg-like.
God Mode, as its name suggests, unlocks an overview of all Control Panel options in one folder. This is a great tool for those who use the Control Panel often. This way, power users don’t need to navigate through the Control Panel to tweak their PCs.
The first step is to create a new folder where you want it to be. This can be in the Desktop or another folder. Now, name the folder with “GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}”.
As easy as that, your master control panel is ready for you. Do you want to use a different term other than God Mode? When you name the folder, you can replace “GodMode” with another term you prefer more.
2. Quick Phone Dialer
Have you ever wanted to call someone through your computer before? To do this, you need to have your computer’s phone port connected. Run the executable file by pressing Windows + R.
Type in dialer.exe and press enter or click OK. The phone dialer will pop up. If your computer isn’t ready for calling, a warning will pop-up.
3. Typing Exercise in Word
Do you want to see one of the somewhat helpful Microsoft Office Easter Eggs? The following Easter Egg is fun to try whenever you’re bored and stuck with a Windows computer.
The first thing you need is to open a new Word document. Type “=rand(200,99)” and press enter. After a few seconds, you’ll see a big wall of text taking up your document.
You can also experiment by typing different values, going from (1,1) to (200,99). The first value in the parenthesis is the reputation of the text. The second number is equal to how many in a row the text repeats.
4. Star Wars CMD Code
If you’re a big fan of the Star Wars franchise, you’re sure to enjoy this Microsoft Easter Egg. This command prompt works on all operating systems that have a command line and support Telnet. That includes Windows 10.
Before you can use this command, you need to have Telnet enabled. To enable Telnet, press Windows + Q on your keyboard and type “telnet”. After, click on “Turn Windows Features on or off from the results”.
Look for the Telnet Client entry. Check the box and then click OK. Now, you wait for Windows to complete the changes you requested before you click Close.
With that, you’ve enabled Telnet on your computer. Now, launch the Run menu with Windows + R. Open the command prompt by typing “cmd” and then pressing Enter.
Run the command: “telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl”. Now, you can watch Star Wars as you’ve never seen before, in ASCII characters. Don’t forget to prepare your popcorn and soda before you run the command.
5. Add a UX Easter Egg in SharePoint
SharePoint is a great program for document management. It’s key to bringing together an organization. Did you know that you can hide a UX Easter Egg in it?
This Easter Egg is small yet it can enhance user experience well. Use CSS3 to insert the animation. Add the following code to set up the animation:
@keyframes rotating {
from {
transform: rotate(0deg);
}
to {
transform: rotate(360deg);
}
}
Next, bind the rotation animation to the gear icons. Use the following code to bind it.
.ms-Icon–gear:hover {
animation: rotating 2s linear infinite;
}
Now, working on SharePoint is more fun and interactive. Do you want to see what else you can do to make SharePoint interesting? Check out our link for more SharePoint help.
6. Arbitrary-Precision Arithmetic
The calculator is a useful program for solving mathematical problems on-the-spot. Yet, did you know that the Windows calculator can make mistakes too? This bug has been around since the beginnings of Windows, too.
Before we talk about the bug, let’s answer a few basic math questions first. First, is it true that the square root of 4 is 2? Second, when you subtract 2 from 0, you’ll get 0, won’t you?
We all know that the answers to both questions are yes. When you use the Windows calculator program to confirm these, the results will differ.
7. Play With Cortana
While it’s a slow process, manufacturers are integrating AI into their programs. For example, Amazon has Alexa, Apple has Siri, and Google has Google Assistant. Windows has a personal productivity assistant named Cortana.
This Microsoft Easter Egg is more fun to do if you activate speech recognition and dictation. One vital piece of equipment for this to work is a working microphone connected to your PC. Activate speech recognition by going to the “Time & Language” section in settings.
Click Speech and click on “Speech, inking, & typing privacy settings”. You’ll reach a page where you can click “Turn on speech services and typing suggestions”. This will activate Cortana and speech recognition.
Now, you can ask Cortana to do simple things for you. Ask her to flip a coin or roll the dice. When she complies, you can watch the coin flip or a pair of die roll onscreen.
8. Unusable Names
Here are a few interesting Windows 10 Easter Eggs for times when you’re naming folders or files. Did you know that you can’t use the following names for your folders?
- CON
- AUX
- PRN
- LPT# (# is a number)
- COM#
- NUL
- CLOCK$
Do you know why you can’t use these names? Windows reserves these names for device names. That means only Windows can use these names.
9. DOOM: Staying on Brand
Let’s talk about game-related Windows Easter Eggs. When Doom got released on Windows, the game used port 666. This is a reference to the Number of the Beast.
Until now, port 666 is the only port reserved for doom. You can check this by going to C:WindowsSystem32driversetc. Open in Notepad the file “services”.
10. Slide to Shut Down Feature
This isn’t much of a Microsoft Office Easter Egg but it’s functional. In the folder C:WindowsSystem32, you’ll see the SlideToShutDown EXE file. This hidden feature is an alternative way to shut down your Windows computer.
On a desktop computer, you can create a shortcut for this shutdown option. If you’re on a laptop with a Windows 10 OS, go to tablet mode. Press the power button for 3 to 5 seconds to launch SlideToShutDown.
Discover More Windows 10 Easter Eggs!
That’s it for our list of 10 Windows 10 Easter Eggs. We hope you learned from and enjoyed reading this post. Now, it’s your turn to impress a friend with this newfound knowledge.
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