Excel art can be abstract or realistic, like this interpretation of the Mona Lisa by jalaj.

A true artist can find inspiration almost anywhere, including in the digital realm. But when we think of art created with computers, the tools that first jump to mind are drawing apps like Adobe Illustrator, 3D modelers like Google SketchUp, or animation tools like Cinema 4D. Not Microsoft Office.

In this piece, Alan Engisch varied the column and row widths in Excel to create the illusion of curves.

But the truly creative can make art out of nearly anything, including Microsoft Word, Excel, and even—you guessed it—PowerPoint. Don’t believe us? Head over to TheArtofOffice.com to see for yourself—the site is a treasure trove of homemade projects, all available for download as the original Office-formatted files. Users can contribute by adding tags and comments, rating the submissions for usefulness and artistry, and, of course, uploading their own creations.

Katybo2’s PowerPoint art It’s a Mac World incorporates the Office 2008 logos.

Don’t forget to click the Artists tab in the site’s navigation to see a list of showcased artists, including Pixelfreak (whose Excel-made flipbook Scrollbooks is not to be missed), Mark Mothersbaugh (of Devo fame, contributing Postcards from Invisible, Utah, an illustrated story in Word), and Zeus Jones (who collaborated with Mothersbaugh on Postcards and also retells Edwin A. Abbott’s novel Flatland in an animated, scored, 2D PowerPoint presentation). But we found jaw-dropping submissions by regular folks, too—check out some of our favorites here.

User orson “painted” this portrait of Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo in Excel.

Beauty, done in Word by veerublog, is first displayed as just 1’s and 0’s until the viewer changes the font face and text size to reveal this hidden picture.

Think you have the MS Office skills to create your own piece of Office Art? Enter our "Art of Office Challenge" and you could win one of five copies of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition.