Microsoft Office

The nerdy, boring sibling of the Microsoft office family, Excel is always associated with mathematical functions, ledgers, and other yawn inducing things. Little did you know, Excel has a secret second life full of fun and weird things! Here’s 10 of them, conveniently displayed in list form for you:

10. Etch-a-Sketch

Remember etch-a-sketch? Now you can doodle away with your keyboard arrows, excel style. This will keep you mildly amused for about ten minutes, but it beats actually doing work with excel.

9. Meeting Bingo

Next time you have a really boring meeting to attend, use this tool to generate some meeting bingo cards for you and your coworkers. Just fill out the the list with your workplaces most trite & overused buzzwords, and you’re ready to go. Winner gets first pick of the new office chairs.

8. Pranks

There’s a lot of different excel modifications you can make to excel to have fun with (or at the expense of) your coworkers. For example, did you know that 2 + 2 = 5 (for large values of 2) ? Install this on your coworkers computer and, with patience, that calculation will eventually find its way into one of their complex worksheets.

7. ASCII Animation

I don’t even want to think about how this was created, but the point is that if you are really bored and inclined, you can.

6. Board Games

That’s right, a completely functional copy of monopoly built right into excel (complete with wheelin’ & dealin’, cut-throat A.I. !) , and it’s not the only board game for excel, you can find most popular board games for excel.

5. Spirograph

The crappy toy is now a crappy excel add-on. Did you know that there’s a direct correlation between the decline of Spirograph and the rise in gang activity? Think about it.

4. Joke Charts & Graphs

Graph Jam features a huge collection of user submitted joke graphs and charts for your amusement. Put Excel’s visualization tools to good use, and make some of your own.

3. Draw

Probably not your first choice in drawing tools, but people have created some jaw-dropping drawings with Excel, and you can too.

2. Make Music

Someone has made a fully functional drum machine and a synthesizer with Excel! One more Excel based instrument, and you could create the geekiest band in the world.

1. Video Games

There’s an entire world of video games ported to excel (like tetris) out there, as well as some made specifically for excel. Try to be productive at work, knowing that.