Lesson 1.4 of the Free Claude Cowork Course · 25 minutes
Overview
This is the lesson most people come for: turning source material into finished, client-ready deliverables. Cowork generates real Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint decks — not text you paste into them. You’ll build one of each from the same source folder, and learn how templates turn “pretty good” output into “matches our house style” output.
What You’ll Do
- Generate a formatted Word report from a folder of source notes
- Build a spreadsheet with structure and a slide deck with a narrative arc
- Use a template file to control formatting, so outputs match your standards
The Lesson
Say “start lesson 1.4”. The scenario folder contains raw material — meeting notes, a data file, a few reference documents. You’ll brief Cowork to produce a report in Word, then re-run a similar brief pointed at a template file included in the course, and compare: same content, but the second one follows the template’s headings, tone, and structure. Then you’ll do a quick pass on a spreadsheet and a short deck, because the briefing pattern is the same across all three formats — only the format line of your brief changes.
The template insight is the one to remember: it’s the seed of the shared context folder your team will build in Module 2.
Try It Now
Take one document template your team actually uses — a report format, a one-pager, anything — drop it in a folder, and have Cowork produce a new document following it from any source material you choose.
What’s Next
← Previous: 1.3 Working With Files
Next: 1.5 Agents and Parallel Work →
New here? Download the full course free on GitHub.
Rolling this out for a whole team? See our live team training.