You remember Nelly’s music video for Dilemma, featuring the incredible Kelly Rowland sending a text in Microsoft Excel, right? Well, it turns out sending a message in Excel is actually possible.
For years it has perplexed, intrigued and sparked laughter from the Gizmodo Australia team. Why did the 2002 music video (which celebrated its 20-year anniversary last month) show Rowland typing text message in Excel on a Nokia phone? Why not just use the native texting app? Does Excel even have messaging capabilities?
Implausible, I hear you say, but the dilemma has been resolved.
Rowland may have been typing an email instead, as explained by TikTok user Dan Strong (@xlninjadan).
@xlninjadan Kelly Rowland in Dilemma by Nelly is finally justified for using Excel on her Nokia flip phone! #exceltips #xlninjadan #nelly #nellyiloveyou #kellyrowland #excel Nelly Furtado Dilemma music video Excel funny
“Did you know that with a hyperlink function you can send more than just a website link? You can actually use the ‘mailto’ scheme,” explained Strong.
What is that hyperlink function? Well, here’s it in its entirety, including a hypothetical email address that Rowland may have used: =Hyperlink(“mailto:babyboo@aol.com?subject=hey&body=”&AI,”Send Email”)
“And then naturally she was going to hit the ‘send email’ button [which would then pop up]”, added Strong.
“Probably that part of the video was cut off for time purposes.”
Now, I’m skeptical of a few things with this explanation, mostly of if Excel’s hyperlink emailing function was widely known in 2002, some five years after the application was released by Microsoft.
On that note, I can’t find a solid answer for if Excel had hyperlink support in its 2002 version, much less for the Nokia 9290 communicator version (a device we were reminded of with our Microsoft Surface Duo 2 review).
But I can find Rowland’s answer to why the scene existed in the first place, as she explained to Buzzfeed in 2016:
“OK, I can’t explain this picture. I was given this phone — we probably got some extra perks for having this phone in the video, y’all know how that works by now. And basically, I don’t know why they had this. I don’t know why that screen is like this. I’m sorry I can’t give you a really good answer. Yeah, I have no idea.”
She also later elaborated on it in a talk show interview:
Kelly Rowland has no time for your memes about Microsoft Excel pic.twitter.com/DAk2QC6iNa
— Michael Baggs (@MichaelBaggs) February 25, 2019
Anyway, we stan Rowland. We’re lesser fans of Excel, but it’s neat that it has this function. Happy Friday.