Document Skills: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF
Post 9 of 14
Introduction
Four of Cowork’s 13 built-in skills are document creators. They generate finished files — not just inline content — and write them into your OneDrive or SharePoint. The deliverable lands in the side panel during the conversation and stays in OneDrive afterward.
From Prompt to Finished File
Word skill.
- Drafts and edits
.docxfiles end-to-end. - Grounds content in attached files (drag-and-drop or pulled from OneDrive/SharePoint/Teams).
- Honors specifications for tone, length, audience, and structure.
“Draft a 2-page board memo on Q1 results. Use the attached financial summary and the previous board memo as references. Direct tone, no jargon. Save to /Documents/Board/.”
Excel skill.
- Builds spreadsheets including formulas.
- Consolidates messy CSVs into a clean structure.
- Adds summary rows, pivot-style breakdowns, and commentary.
“Build a client-tracking spreadsheet from my last 90 days of email. Columns: contact, last interaction date, deal stage, next action, owner. Add a summary sheet with totals by stage.”
PowerPoint skill.
- Generates decks from content or templates.
- Iterates on individual slides through follow-up prompts.
- Can open the result directly in PowerPoint Online.
“Turn the attached Word memo into a 10-slide executive deck for the leadership team. Use our standard template (attached). Include a risk slide and a one-slide summary at the end.”
PDF skill.
- Produces PDFs, including from generated Word, Markdown, or HTML.
- Can read from PDFs as input for any other workflow.
“Take the attached customer survey results, summarise the key findings into a 3-page PDF brief, and email it to the product team for Friday’s review.”
Cross-skill chains. A single prompt can chain document creation with email or Teams: “Build the deck, save it to OneDrive, and post a link in the #leadership channel.” Each external action is approved separately.
File outputs and access.
- Files land in the side panel during the conversation.
- Office files can be opened directly in their online apps.
- Use Download All to export a session’s outputs as a zip.
- Files persist in OneDrive after the conversation ends.
Supported file types Cowork can attach (for grounding). Word (.docx, .doc, .docm, .dot, .dotx, .odt, .rtf), Excel (.csv, .xls, .xlsm, .xlsx, .ods), PowerPoint (.odp, .ppt, .pptm, .pptx), PDF, Markdown, images, plain text, code files, configs, notebooks (.ipynb), audio, video, and archives. Maximum 200 MB per attachment.
What document skills cannot do.
- Operate on local files. OneDrive and SharePoint only.
- Read encrypted files even if you have access.
- Delete files in OneDrive or SharePoint (by design).
Takeaway
The document skills shine when the deliverable is the goal, not the editing experience. Brief the outcome, attach the grounding material, approve external actions. The file lands ready to use.
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