Have you given up on the April Fool’s Day premise because it’s too hard to think of something that surprises people? The information age offers you many possibilities to embrace the spirit of the day with renewed passion.
If you can distract others from their computers while they’re still online, you can have a day of fun.
First, discover the AutoCorrect Options. In Office 2007, click the Office button, go to the Word Options button at the bottom (or whatever program they are in followed by options). Choose Review on the left and you will see the AutoCorrect Options button. Here you can replace one word with another. Replace “el” with “April Fool” or whatever word you choose. Repeat this with other words of choice like your name or company name (in Office 2003 or below, click Tools and then AutoCorrect Options to get the same dialog).
The View menu (Tools, Options, View in 2003 version) allows you to change the way things look. You can turn gridlines on and off in both Word and Excel, change the background color, and show and hide items such as the ruler or row and column headings.
In version 2003 or lower, you can right-click on any toolbar and choose Custom. From there, you can right-click any button, such as Print or Save, and choose Change Button Image. You can also right click again to rename the new icon to “April Fool”.
PowerPoint allows you to edit all the slides in a presentation by going to the View menu and choosing “Slide Master.” Change the font to a symbol font or another language. You can also add a footer here that appears on all slides, “April Fool” can be a good choice. You can also select all the slides (Control A) from the Slide Sorter view (the one where all the slides are in the window at once) and go to the Animations tab. Click “Advance Slide … automatically after [a specified number of] seconds. “This will automate the presentation even when they try to control it with the mouse.
A quick and easy trick in Excel is to hide all the sheet tabs in a workbook. To do this, simply grab the vertical bar to the right of the sheet tabs and drag to the left as far as you can. Worksheets will not be seen; there will only be a long scroll bar. You can even go to the Window menu and hide an entire book. While on the Window menu, click the middle of the worksheet and then Freeze Panels. Now the rows above where you clicked will not move; they will only be able to scroll below the frozen row.
Another fun Excel trick is to turn on the Speak on Enter feature. From the Office button, choose Excel Options, Customize; From the drop-down menu at the top, choose All Commands. Scroll down until you find Speak on Login and click Add to place it on the Quick Access Toolbar. Click the new button once, and each time you press Enter from a cell, Excel will speak its content out loud. This is accessed in Office 2003 through Tools, Voice. Nonsense aside, the Speech feature in Excel is useful for correcting and customizing the toolbar to suit your personal working style is a good idea.
Enjoy these quick and easy jokes, but use discretion. Oh, and keep a record of what you did; you will have to reverse the steps to undo them; There is a fine line between foolishness and frustration.
Access a longer article with step-by-step instructions, more complicated jokes, detailed explanations on how to undo, and a complete, printable cheat sheet of valuable and useful Office shortcuts on the New Voice Training website.
