Clippy is the key to this Office 97 Easter egg that went unnoticed for decades

It's not every day that I get to write about Office 97, but when an Easter egg is found in an ancient piece of software, I get the privilege. Recently, X user "Albacore" (@thebookisclosed) revealed an Easter egg that has gone unnoticed for decades.

If you perform a specific sequence of tasks within Office 97, you'll see a special treat. Specifically, a series of movements and key presses while using Microsoft Word will show a whole set of development credits.

To get the Easter egg to appear, you need to set your system date to 1997 or later. Then, you need to hold Control and grab the standard toolbar.

You then need to move the toolbar to the left, down, right, and up — each time with a release and hold of the Control key between each direction.

After doing all that, you need to search "This is not a contest." inside Clippy. The period has to be included with the search text.

Albacore demonstrated how to get the Easter egg to appear and shared some other details on X.

"With such a convoluted activation sequence I'm not surprised that there are no obvious traces of the Easter egg even now, 29 years later. The comments Clippit provides are a cherry on top," said the tech sleuth.

You can also make more animations appear by holding Shift while you press Search.

The Easter egg is so difficult to find that I have to wonder if it was ever intended to be found. The tasks, including a unique order of dragging a toolbar and then posing a specific search query to Clippy, are so specific that it seems unlikely someone would find them by exploring Office 97.

Instead, it appears to be a playful way the developers can know about a secret set of credits to themselves.

Then again, other Easter eggs have have similarly complex requirements, such as the Word 97 Pinball Easter egg and the Excel 97 Flight Simulator Easter egg.

How hidden is too hidden when it comes to Easter eggs? Let us know in the comments!

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