At my job, we use Excel extensively to keep track of software testing progress. One typical use is to maintain a list of features to be tested, along with their current pass/fail statuses and an attempt at a rough subdivision into functional areas. Excel's AutoFilter then makes it easy to ask questions like "show me all failed tests relating to function block scheduling."
This works really well as long as "function block scheduling" is one of the categories into which you've subdivided your features list. If it's not, you have to get a little creative to filter your list. One approach to this problem I've found useful is filtering based on columns populated with a formula similar to this:
=IF(ISERROR(SEARCH($K$5,K6)),"No","Yes")
If column K contains feature descriptions, this formula returns "Yes" is the description matches the search string in K5 and "No", otherwise. Filtering based on this formula makes it possible to display every list item whose description matches a word. If there is more than one column to search, you can use string concatenation to aggregate the columns together:
=IF(ISERROR(SEARCH($K$5,K6&L6&M6)),"No","Yes")
So, why the name apropos? Follow this link.