Most people start using Cowork to ask questions or draft some text. Fair enough — but you’re leaving 90% of its power on the table. Cowork can create real files, manipulate data, build functional tools, and automate tasks that would normally take you hours.
Here are ten things that consistently surprise new users.
1. Turn messy data into a clean spreadsheet
You have a PDF with a table, a pasted list from an email, or some CSV data that needs cleaning. Drop it into Cowork and ask:
Clean up this data, remove duplicates, and export it as a properly formatted Excel file with headers.
Cowork will parse your data, fix formatting inconsistencies, remove duplicates, and hand you a downloadable .xlsx file. It handles messy date formats, mixed separators, and encoding issues without you having to specify anything.
This works with surprisingly complex data too — think bank statements, product catalogues, or survey exports.
2. Create presentation slides from a briefing
Give Cowork a topic, some bullet points, or even a full document, and ask for a presentation:
Create a 12-slide presentation about our Q1 results. Use these numbers: [paste data]. Keep it clean and professional.
You get a real .pptx file — not a mock-up, not markdown, but an actual PowerPoint file with proper slides, titles, and content blocks. You can open it in PowerPoint, Keynote, or Google Slides and edit from there.
It won’t win design awards, but the structure and content are solid. Most people use it as a starting point that saves them 80% of the work.
3. Analyse a PDF contract and flag risks
Upload a contract, terms of service, or legal document:
Read this contract and list every clause that could be problematic for me as the service provider. Flag anything unusual compared to standard Belgian contract law.
Cowork reads the full document, understands the context, and gives you a structured overview of potential risks — with references to specific clauses. It’s not a replacement for legal counsel, but it’s an excellent first-pass filter that helps you focus your (expensive) lawyer time on the things that actually matter.
4. Build a working HTML page
Need a landing page, an event invitation, or a product one-pager? Describe what you want:
Build a one-page website for our team offsite on April 15. Include the agenda, location (Ghent, Belgium), a map embed, and a registration form. Make it look modern and clean.
Cowork generates a complete HTML file with CSS styling. You can preview it in your browser, host it anywhere, or use it as a starting point for your developer. It handles responsive design, Google Maps embeds, and form layouts.
5. Compare two documents side by side
You have two versions of a proposal, two contracts, or an old and new version of a policy document:
Compare these two documents. Show me exactly what changed — additions, deletions, and modifications. Summarise the key differences.
Cowork will produce a detailed diff with the important changes highlighted and explained. Much more useful than a raw text diff because it understands context — it knows that moving a paragraph isn’t the same as changing its content.
6. Generate charts from raw data
Paste numbers, upload a CSV, or describe what you want to visualise:
Here are our monthly sales figures for 2025 [paste data]. Create a chart showing the trend, highlight Q3 where we had the dip, and add a trendline.
Cowork writes Python code behind the scenes (using matplotlib or similar), executes it, and gives you a chart image. You can ask for bar charts, line charts, scatter plots, heatmaps — and iterate on the design.
7. Transcribe and summarise meeting notes
You have rough meeting notes — either your own scribbles or a transcript from a recording tool:
Here are the raw notes from our product meeting. Turn them into structured minutes with: decisions made, action items (with owners), and open questions.
The output is clean, well-organised, and immediately shareable with your team. It picks up who committed to what, even from messy notes where names appear in different formats.
8. Create a multi-sheet Excel workbook with formulas
This goes beyond simple spreadsheets. You can ask Cowork to build complex workbooks:
Create a project budget tracker in Excel. Sheet 1: budget overview per category. Sheet 2: individual expenses with date, category, amount, and description. Sheet 1 should automatically calculate totals from Sheet 2 using SUMIFS formulas.
The result is a working .xlsx file with cross-sheet references and proper formulas. Not Python calculations embedded in the file — actual Excel formulas that keep working after you open the file.
9. Batch-process multiple files
Select a folder in Cowork and you can process everything in it:
Look at all the invoices in this folder. Extract the invoice number, date, amount, and supplier name from each one. Put everything in a summary spreadsheet.
Cowork will iterate through each file, extract the relevant information, and compile it into a single overview. This works with PDFs, images (using OCR), Word documents, and text files.
10. Write and run Python scripts for one-off tasks
You don’t need to know Python. Just describe what you need:
I have a folder with 200 photos. Rename them all to the format YYYY-MM-DD_description.jpg using the EXIF date. Where there's no EXIF data, use the file modification date.
Cowork writes the script, runs it in its sandbox, and applies it to your files. This is genuinely useful for one-off tasks that are too tedious to do manually but not worth building a proper tool for.
Other examples people use regularly: converting file formats, resizing images in bulk, merging CSVs, or cleaning up folder structures.
The underlying pattern
What connects all these examples is that Cowork can execute code and create real files. It’s not summarising, paraphrasing, or generating text — it’s actually doing the work and giving you the output.
The key insight: if you can describe what you want clearly enough for a competent assistant to do it, Cowork can probably handle it. The barrier isn’t the tool’s capability — it’s learning to think of it as an assistant that can do, not just say.
What’s next?
- New to Cowork? Start with our beginner’s guide
- Ready for more? Check the intermediate guide for scheduled tasks and automation
- Want to build custom workflows? The advanced guide covers skills and plugins