Files

Files that open as what they are, and save back the same

A Word file opens on paper and saves as .docx. An Excel file opens in a grid and saves as .xlsx. A PDF takes marks that any PDF reader shows. Each opens beside the folder it came from.

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Features last checked 14 October 2026. Products change; tell us if something is out of date.

What it does

What Files holds

Twelve things people do with files every week, each as it works today.

Browse

A file manager that behaves like the one on your desktop

Files has a list and a grid, with real thumbnails in the grid. Drag to move, right-click for everything, and use the keys you already know. It works the same in company Files and in each project's Files tab.

Thumbnails are the file itself: a photo, a PDF's first page, a video's first frame, a document as a sheet of paper, a spreadsheet's first cells, a canvas's shapes.
Drop a folder from your computer and its structure comes with it. Paste a screenshot anywhere on the page and it uploads with a timestamped name. A tray shows each file's progress and which folder it went into.
Drag files onto a folder or a breadcrumb to move them. Cmd or Ctrl with X, C and V cut, copy and paste, F2 renames, Delete trashes, and the Move to sheet lists your recent folders first.
Search the open folder as you type. Each result says which folder it sits in, and that line opens the folder.
A folder of thousands scrolls as lightly as a folder of ten, because only the rows on screen are drawn.

Open beside

Open a file next to the list and keep your place

Click a file and it opens to the right of a narrow list of names. Go through a folder file by file without losing where you were, or send any file to a tab of its own.

Press Space on a file to preview it beside the list. The arrow keys then move to the next file and show it. Space again closes it.
Drag the divider to the width you like. Escape or the cross closes the file.
Cmd or Ctrl with Enter opens the file in its own tab, titled with its name, with a way back to its folder.
The editor for each file type loads the first time you open one, and starts loading when the pointer rests on the file.
On a phone the open file takes the whole screen, and a swipe in from the left edge goes back to the list.

Documents

Word documents on real pages, with your letterhead

A document is written on sheets of paper the size of the page, with headers, footers, page numbers and page breaks. It downloads as a .docx that opens in Word like any other, or as a PDF with the same page breaks.

New documents start on A4 with 2.54 cm margins. Switch to Letter, Legal, A5 or A3, portrait or landscape, and type each margin in centimetres.
Headers and footers repeat on every sheet, with a different first page if you want one and each sheet's own page number.
Tables take borders, shading, padding and merged cells. Type a flowchart in Mermaid and it draws on the page; in the Word download it becomes a sharp picture.
Mark any document as a template. A copy keeps its page setup, header and footer, and fills in {date}, {me}, {company}, {project} and the project's {client} from the CRM.
Meeting notes, Project brief, Spec, Weekly report and Letter come ready-made.

Write together

Write together, with comments on the words they are about

Several people type in the same document at once, each with a named, coloured cursor. Select words and start a thread on that passage.

Undo takes back only your own changes. If the connection drops, the document still opens and keeps saving, and hands over to live without duplicating anything.
Press Cmd+Option+M on selected words to comment. People reply, @mention, resolve and reopen, and a notification opens the exact thread.
Faces of who else is in the document sit in the bar, ringed in their cursor colour.
Find and replace with match case, an outline of every heading, and a word count that counts your selection.
On a phone a document opens to read, with no keyboard in the way. Tap Edit for a toolbar above the keyboard.

Cord edits

Ask Cord to change a section and decide word by word

Cord proposes edits as tracked changes on the page: struck words, underlined additions, and Accept and Reject on each. Nothing changes until you say so.

Select a passage and open Ask Cord with Cmd+J. Cord sees your selection and your unsaved typing.
If you edited that passage after Cord read it, Accept refuses and says so, so your words are never overwritten.
Every accepted change is saved as a version, and versions note when an AI tool made them.
Blocks that hold card numbers, keys or labelled passwords are hidden from the model and can never be edited by it.
Pending changes survive leaving the document and coming back in the same tab.

Word files

Open a client's .docx and keep working in it

An uploaded Word file opens in the same paper editor and saves back as .docx, with its fonts, tables, pictures, headers and footers, page size and margins.

When a file has things the editor cannot keep, it opens drawn the way Word draws it, with a note naming what editing would drop, such as tracked changes, footnotes or charts.
Choose Edit anyway and the original stays in Versions.
Page-number fields stay live. Lists keep their numbering levels, and tables keep their column widths and merged cells.
Convert to Word turns a Markdown, text or HTML file into a document beside it.
Attach a Word file or a PDF to Cord and it can make an editable document in Files, with Undo.

Spreadsheets

Excel files that stay Excel files

An .xlsx, .csv or .tsv opens in a grid with tabs, a formula bar and formulas that work like Excel's. Saving an .xlsx rewrites only the cells you changed and leaves the rest of the workbook as it was.

Formulas chain through each other and across sheets. A circular reference shows #REF! and a failed formula shows its Excel error, in red.
Enter, Tab, Shift+Tab, F2, Delete and Cmd+Z do what they do in Excel. Typing on a cell writes over it.
Copy a block from Excel or Google Sheets and paste it in. Numbers arrive as numbers and the pasted block stays selected.
Number formats: number, whole number, percent, CHF, dollars and euros, set across a whole selection.
Every sheet is a tab. Add one, rename it by double-clicking, delete it. A CSV saves back as a CSV.

PDF markup

Mark up a PDF where it lives

PDFs open in Coding Cords' own viewer. Highlight, underline, strike out, draw, add a text box or a note, and put down boxes, ellipses, lines, arrows and polygons. Each mark is saved into the PDF with your name on it.

The marks are standard PDF annotations, so a client who downloads the file sees them in Acrobat or Preview.
Tools stay on after each mark, so five highlights in a row need one click. Click a mark for a small menu with its colour, line weight and Delete.
Find marks every match on the pages and counts them. Zoom runs from 25% to 600%, and text stays sharp.
A page list runs down the side, and a box takes you to page 9 when you type 9.
Invoices, proposals, payslips and receipts from the rest of the workspace open in this same viewer.

Forms and pictures

Fill in the form, then put your signature on it

The fields a PDF was made with can be typed in, ticked and chosen, and they save into the file. Then place a picture on the page: a signature, a stamp, a logo.

Choose a picture from your computer or from Files. Crop it, turn it, and remove the paper behind a signature in one click.
Background removal runs on Coding Cords' own server and keeps nothing unless you save, which suits pictures like signatures and ID photos.
The picture follows your pointer and goes down where you click, with its proportions kept. Esc puts it away.
iPhone HEIC and TIFF photos display upright in Files and can be cropped, turned and cut out. An edited image is saved as a new version, so the original stays one click away.
Sign in the PDF's bar sends the file out for signature to people who need no account.

Canvas

Draw a flowchart by dragging a line into empty space

A canvas is a board for flowcharts, mind maps, database diagrams and wireframes. Pull a line from a box and let go on empty canvas, and a new box appears there, joined, ready to type into.

Tidy up with Shift+T arranges joined boxes in steps, routes right-angled lines around them and picks left to right or top to bottom, whichever fits a screen better. Where lines cross, one hops over the other.
Colour lines gives each line its own ink among the lines it could be mistaken for, so you can follow any line from end to end.
Sticky notes, text, shapes, a pencil with an eraser, and pictures you can crop or cut out. Paste text or an image and it lands on the board.
Copy and paste go through the system clipboard, so things move between canvases and between browser tabs.
On a phone one finger draws and two fingers pan and zoom. The tools sit at the foot of the screen.

Databases and screens

Type a database, sketch a screen, or ask Cord to draw it

On the same canvas, write tables as text and they appear with their links, or lay out phone, tablet and desktop frames with ready-made parts.

Write users with id uuid pk and org_id uuid > organisations, and the tables appear with a line from column to column. Write one again with changes and it updates in place.
Frames come at real sizes: phone 390 by 844, tablet 834 by 1112, desktop 1440 by 900. Things dropped in a frame move with it.
Thirteen ready parts, from Button and Input to Top bar and Tab bar, and about 180 icons to pick from.
Ask Cord for a flowchart, mind map, database or wireframe. It reads what is on the canvas, draws beside it, and one undo removes it.
Cord can also relabel, restyle, join or delete things, or turn selected boxes into real database tables, as one undo step.

Safe and shared

Undo anything, find anything, share a folder with a client

Every file keeps versions you can name and restore. Deleted files wait in Trash. Search reads inside your files, and a project folder can go to the client in one click.

A version is cut when someone new starts, after ten quiet minutes, after an hour, and around every AI edit. Name one "Sent to client", compare it word by word and restore it. What stood before is kept too.
Trash holds files and folders for 30 days. Each row says who deleted it and how long it has left. Trashing shows an Undo toast.
Search finds a PDF by its text and a canvas by the words on its boxes. A scan with no text and a photo of a whiteboard are found by what they show.
On a project, an admin chooses Share with client on a folder, and the client reads and downloads it in the portal.
Share with a colleague sends the link as a direct message. Attach a file from Files to a task, and it stays in Files.

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Cord here

Ask Cord about your files

Cord knows which folder is open, which file you are looking at and what you selected. It reads your attachments with your own permissions and treats text inside them as data. Changes to a document arrive as tracked changes for you to accept.

Make the scope section shorter and more formal
Which three vendors cost us most this quarter?
Turn this PDF into an editable document
Draw the support ticket flow from email to resolved
Make a letter for Northwind from the Letterhead template

Any AI tool that supports MCP, such as Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and Antigravity, can read your documents as Markdown, read a canvas's shapes and lines, create files, and edit a document's text, with your own permissions.

Ask Cord to build or fix a spreadsheet in Files: formulas, tables and tidy-ups. Today it reads one you attach.★

Simple to run

Files is part of the workspace you already pay for. There is no second login, no storage service to connect and no per-editor licence.

Everyone in the company can open every file

There are no per-file permissions. Sharing means telling someone. Files of one company are never visible to another.

Clients see only what you share

Admins share a project folder with its client from the portal. The client reads and downloads what is inside and sees nothing else.

Deleting is recoverable

Trash keeps files for 30 days. Delete forever is for whoever deleted the file and for admins, and Empty trash asks first.

Uploads go straight to storage

Files go from the browser to storage over a signed link. A file can be up to 100 MB, and stored files count against your plan's storage.

Cord is included

Every person has AI on every plan, so asking Cord about a spreadsheet or a contract needs no separate subscription.

Fair to say

What it doesn't do yet

Where a part isn't built, it is here, and the ones we're working on carry a star.

On the roadmap

Presentations★Slides made and presented in Files, next to documents, spreadsheets and canvases.
Cord edits spreadsheets★Ask Cord to build or fix a spreadsheet: formulas, tables and tidy-ups. Today it can read one you attach.
Working offline★Keep writing documents and reading files without a connection. Changes sync when you are back online.
Desktop apps for Mac and Windows★The workspace in its own window, with its own place in the dock and taskbar.
Canvas export★Export a canvas as an image or a PDF.
Public links★Anyone with a link can open a file or folder, without signing in.
Sort, filter and charts★Sort and filter the rows of a sheet, and draw charts from them.
Co-editing spreadsheets★Several people edit the same sheet at once.
PDF page tools★Reorder, rotate, insert and delete pages, and split or merge PDFs.

Not in the product today

Suggesting mode for peopleOnly Cord's proposals appear as tracked changes. Tracked changes, footnotes, equations, text boxes and charts in an uploaded .docx are not kept when you edit it.
Co-editing in uploaded Word files and canvasesDocuments made in Coding Cords are written together live. An uploaded .docx and a canvas have one writer at a time, and the others read.
Comments outside documentsThreads exist on documents only. PDFs take single notes, and spreadsheets, canvases and uploads have no comments.
Spreadsheet analysis toolsNo pivot tables, find and replace, inserting rows or columns, merged cells, colours or borders. It suits budgets, price lists and data files.
Editing the text in a PDFPDFs take marks on top, and fillable fields. There is no editing of existing text, no text recognition on scans and no redaction.
Expiring linksLinks don't expire and can't have a password. Outsiders get a project folder through the client portal.
Stars that follow youStarred files are kept in the browser you starred them in.

Compared with

Looking at it beside your current tools

Questions

Questions people ask

Can I send a client a Word file made here?

Yes. Download any document as .docx and it opens in Word with the same fonts, tables, pictures, headers, footers and page size. You can also download a PDF with the same page breaks, or send it for signature from the document's bar.

What happens to a .docx with tracked changes or footnotes?

It opens drawn the way Word draws it, with a note naming what editing would drop. Choose Edit anyway and the original stays in Versions. Documents made in Coding Cords have no footnotes, equations, columns or automatic table of contents.

Do spreadsheets work like Excel?

For budgets, price lists and data files, yes: tabs, formulas across sheets, the usual keys, number formats and paste from Excel. An .xlsx saves as an .xlsx and only the cells you changed are rewritten. There is no sort, filter, chart or pivot table yet, and only one person edits at a time.

Can I edit the text of a PDF?

No. You can mark up a PDF, fill in its fields, place pictures on it and send it for signature. Existing text and pages cannot be changed, scans get no selectable text, and password-protected PDFs do not open.

Can two people work on a canvas or a spreadsheet at once?

One person edits at a time. Everyone else sees the file read-only with a banner naming the editor, and their changes arrive as they are saved. Live co-editing with cursors is for documents made in Coding Cords.

Who can see my files?

Everyone in your company can open every file. Another company's files are never visible. Clients see only the project folders an admin shares with them. Files are not end-to-end encrypted. The Vault is, and it holds passwords and secrets.

How are deleted files and old versions handled?

Deleted files and folders stay in Trash for 30 days with who deleted them and the time left. Versions are kept by moments that matter, and restoring one keeps the current copy as a version too. How far back the history goes depends on the plan.

Open your last contract in Coding Cords

Upload the .docx, mark up the PDF, put the budget in a grid. The files stay the formats you sent.

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★ On our roadmap. Released once it's tested.