Good Excel Practical Jokes, Pranks, Mean Tricks, etc.

[Von Pookie]

Uhoh!...what'd you do, for starters?

 

[countingapples]

I just added a form to pop up in the xlstartup folder. It sentenced our dept joker to a time out for arguing with his computer. I used a for...next loop to count to 5. At that point you can click the close button and it goes away. I forgot to set the 'kill' command for it to erase itself, so he's been closing and reopening excel (our help desk's answer to everything). there was never an opportunity to quietly sneak in and remove it myself. I had posted a query regarding somehelp setting the timing and such awhile back. Several of us are in on it, but I programmed and installed the thing so my butt is going to get the most chewing.

Here's my original posting.

http://www.mrexcel.com/board2/viewtopic.php?t=66495&highlight=

 

[Sourdust]

As the Shaggy song goes "Wasn't me".

 

[countingapples]

I also forgot all about removing my name from the thing, so all anyone has to do is right click on the file and ta-da there I am. :x So far I'm just staying quiet in my corner, sweating bullets, and not saying anything. My super who came up with the idea is mum as well. Funny thing though, IS came up to remove the "virus" and they didn't say anything. I wouldn't be surprised if they're downstairs laughing themselves silly over this.

 

[Sourdust]

My defence to anything like that (such as the one about a pop up message saying the user needs their nails cut when they touch the keyboard I used extensively) has always been that it was a practical exercise as part of my continued efforts to learn as much as possible in order to increase my contribution and efficiency. Complete BS of course but "they" find it difficult to argue with as long as nobody actually knows what you are doing.

 

[countingapples]

Good point. I've already saved more than 3 hours of my time with a simple copy/paste special macro. And made my download links acurate with better formulas such as vlookup and sumif. I can actually prove such a justification, but an accountant putting such a thing on another accountant's comp? I'll have a hard time since I couldn't BS my way out of a paper bag.

 

[just_jon]

Perhaps, under the guise of "Gee, I had something similar happen...", you could offer to snoop out the problem for him/her... while they're at lunch. Re-booti the machine in Safe mode or something, install/uninstall add-ins, etc. And kill your toy. Of course, you would not know that the problem is fixed, so upon his/her return you simply say "Got to get back to my own work, but I'll try again tomorrow at lunch if you want..." (Then look when told something you did fixed it.)

 

[countingapples]

That was the orginal plan when I forgot to set the kill function. IS eventually came up and removed it. They never said anything about it to me, which is why I suspect they think it was funny. The help desk kept telling the target to reboot his machine so it kept coming back up. I'm the only one in the dept who has any VBA stuff loaded, and I'm supposed to be learning advanced excel techniques and VBA, so by definition, I'm the first person that will be suspected. Funny how the practical jokers can never take a joke when it's on them.

 

[Bruno_x]

Countingapples,
Does your "victim" know that there's a site like www.mrexcel.com ?

 

[countingapples]

No. He doesn't go to our accounting roundtables where we discuss a different excel topic each time. I told every one about the site after I had to teach everyone about macros when I didn't know anything about them. Apparently his employees never passed on the info. I learned to never, ever miss a meeting after that experience. You end up being volunteered for things of which you know not.