I’ve shared a lot of Excel tips about how to increase your productivity at work but today I
thought I would post something a little more fun – how to decrease your
productivity! I’m talking about ways to use Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to
play pranks, practical jokes, April Fool’s Day kind of stuff on your friends,
roommates, and coworkers. The intent is not to harm anyone or hurt their
professional careers – this is simply about having some plain ole fun.
A great way to wreak havoc in the workplace is to create a macro
that automatically runs when an Excel workbook is opened. You can do this by writing a
VBA procedure in the Open event of the workbook by using the Visual
Basic Editor. Create a new Excel spreadsheet then press Alt+F11 to launch the
VBA Editor. Next, right-click
the ThisWorkbook object, and then click View Code.
In the Object
list above the Code window, select Workbook. This will automatically
create an empty procedure for the Open event like this and you can now
add your evil code.
To
make Excel automatically close itself when the workbook is opened use this:
Private Sub Workbook_Open()
Application.DisplayAlerts = False
Application.Quit
End Sub
Here’s a trick that will automatically open
Microsoft Word and close Excel:
Sub Workbook_Open()
‘make sure the Microsoft Word Object Library is selected by going to
tools>references
Application.Visible = False
Dim wdApp as Word.Application
Set wdApp = New Word.Application
wdApp.Visible=True
Set wdApp = Nothing
Application.DisplayAlerts = False
Application.Quit
End Sub
This is one of my personal favorites; have a message box pop-up asking
if the user wants to download the virus they requested. Whether they press the
yes or no button the next message tells them the virus has begun downloading!
Private Sub
Workbook_Open()
MsgBox
"The virus you requested is now ready to download, Do you want to start
downloading now?", vbYesNo, "Virus Trojan-x45fju"
MsgBox
"The Virus is Now Downloading. You have made the biggest mistake of your
life! ByE bYe", , "Begin Virus Download"
End Sub
This
function flips the workbook and will make everything on the left now appear on
the right side:
ActiveSheet.DisplayRightToLeft
= True
To
change all cell’s color to black:
Cells.Interior.Color
= RGB(0,0,0)
Instead of
automatically running a macro on opening a workbook (and making it obvious you
did something) you could embed a macro that only runs on certain conditions. A
funny prank is a macro to change the size of the Excel window every time the
user clicks on a cell:
Private Sub
Workbook_SheetSelectionChange(ByVal Sh As Object, ByVal Target As Range)
Application.WindowState
= xlNormal
Application.Width
= Int(Rnd() * 1000) - 100
End Sub
As you can imagine, the possibilities are nearly endless! Now you
may think “All someone has to do is change or delete the code to fix the
problem.” Well, you can protect your VBA code so only those with the password
can modify it. Go to Tools>VBAProject Properties>Protection. Check the
box to lock project for viewing and create a password (and remember it). Now
you’re an evil genius!
Of course,
if you’re not comfortable using VBA (which I recommend you get comfortable and learn it) you can always use these old fashioned
tricks:
- Use find and replace on a document, like replacing “you” with “you idiots”.
- If your coworker has an old school mouse simply remove the ball when they're not around and then sit back and watch the fun when they try to figure out why their mouse isn't working anymore.
- Take a screen capture of a roommate’s desktop and save it as a jpg or bmp file. Turn on the Active Desktop, and make sure to turn off "show desktop icons". Change the wallpaper to the screen capture image you just saved and watch as they click away on their "icons" that mysteriously stopped working.
Have
you ever used something like this on someone? What’s your best Excel prank?
