Excel is everywhere including in crime fiction here’s some examples. Jo Livingstone has compiled some excerpts from novels that mention Excel.
“George spent the next week glued to the chair in front of his computer, plugging new figures into his Excel spreadsheet, moving them about from column to column like some elaborate chess game.”
“Safety First,” Marcia Talley (short story)
Excel isn’t just used a prop, it’s look serves as a simile for a grid-like pattern..
“Like the rest of the houses on the street, it had been built with pale limestone. It was symmetrical and balanced, like it had been designed using Excel.”
Dead Ground, M. W. Craven
See them all at Stopgap.net.
