Fun in Excel: 6 Ways of Fun with Spreadsheets

Let’s have some fun in Excel! You probably do your work with spreadsheets, but there are also ways of having fun in Excel. In this article, we introduce you to 6 fun applications for Microsoft Excel.

1: Play Tetris in Excel

Probably one of the most addictive games: Tetris is a real classic among all computer games. There are countless versions, but have you ever played it in Excel? You can download the Excel file here.

The setup is quite easy, just run the setup macro:

1. Click on Macros on the Developer ribbon.
2. Select “setup”.
3. Click run.

Now you can just start playing by pressing Ctrl + t on the keyboard. The other keys are shown on the right hand side.

2. Solve your Sudokus in Excel

Another popular game is Sudoku. You have to solve this 9x9x9 number quest in which each 9×9 field can only contain every number from 1-9 once. Also every row and column must have each number from 1 to 9 exactly one time.

There is a version for Excel available. You can download it directly with this link. You can also visit the website of the developer. This Excel version of Sudoku doesn’t only create new Sudokus, but it can also solve existing ones. Please note that it is not possible to play it on a Mac.

3. Create your picture in Excel cells

Admittedly, this sounds a little bit “nerdy”: You can create a picture in Excel only with conditional formatting. Every pixel is represented by the three colors red, green and blue.

If you want to create your image with Excel cells, you can upload your picture to this website. After some seconds, you’ll get the download of an Excel file. When you zoom out – for example to 10% – you can see your picture as shown on the right hand side.

4. More fun? Play a slide puzzle

Another small game in Excel: The slide puzzle. The goal is to sort all the tiles until the image is complete. You can easily start by clicking on ‘Shuffle Tiles’ and change the position of the tiles per drag and drop. The download is available here.

5. One more game: CellSweeper

It works a little bit like Minesweeper, which you probably know from your old Windows computer. Instead of just clicking around, you walk trough the mine field and try not to step on a bomb or meet a zombi (instruction are available).

You can download CellSweeper here. Please note that CellSweeper only works on Excel for Windows.

6. (New) Follow up the most famous chess games

Are you – at least a little bit – interested in chess? Even if not, this is an impressive piece of VBA work in Excel. Follow up the most famous chess games step by step. Select your game on sheet “Board” in cell B4, type 0 in cell K6 (in order to start at the beginning) and use the spinner to see the game.

You can download the file from the Microsoft Techcommunity here.

Do you know any other fun application for Excel? Please leave a comment below and let us know!