If you wanna make some money off Office though, learn how to connect it to databases and look into VBA.
Though, as I said, I'm not sure how much longer VBA will be around...
But, I'll give you a real world example...an example of how I make money today...
I have a client who gets a statement from a bank and can download it in excel format. They need to take that statement and reconcile it with their accounting system, which they can also export to excel format.
Using VBA, I can make a macro that they run which in a few minutes combines the two spreadsheets, compares their values, and kicks out the matches and mis-matches on two separate worksheets (tabs) for them to review the mis-matches, rather than having to do a detailed audit line by line.
How does this mean income? Well...to do it manually would cost at least one person lets say 500 man-hours (pulling that number out, but it's not unreasonable when you are looking at thousands of transactions).
Multiply that by a data-entry clerk hourly rate of 12 bucks an hour and you have $6000. So, whether the person is employed doing other things for the company already, or is employed strictly for this, it costs the company around $6k to do this. Add in taxes and benefits (FICA, SUTA, FUTA, etc...at an average 3.5%) and you have a total cost of $6210.
If you have the macro, then the number of mis-matches is reduced, as well as the accuracy of the process. The final result, lets assume, is a 10% data error rate, so, out of 500 man hours of records to audit, they now only need to spend 50 man hours.
50 * that same rate is 600. And the total cost after T&B is also far less.
So, I walk in and say "I can automate x and y, and allow you to utilize your current labor expenses more efficiently"...and I get contracts.
But, they don't teach ya'll that in these courses.
All that being said, there is a dark horse in this race, and that's overseas outsourcing, where you have salesmen selling easy solutions to people who are used to people like me...but as a result have no idea how their business truly runs.
This is why there is so much outsourcing...