AI WORLD HQPull Names, Emails, and Phone Numbers Out of Messy Text with Cohere
Paste a tangled block of contact info, get a clean list back in seconds — no spreadsheet formulas or manual typing required.
In short: Cohere's Playground can read a messy block of contact info and pull out every name, email, and phone number as a clean list. Sign up free, paste your text into the chat box, and ask for structured output. The model can still miss details, so always review the result before you trust it.
If you've ever stared at a forwarded "who's coming Friday" email trying to copy ten contact details one by one, this workflow is for you. Cohere is an AI company whose Command model is good at reading tangled text and pulling structured data — meaning data organized into clear categories — out of it. By the end of this guide, you'll have a five-minute routine that turns a paragraph of mixed-up contact info into a tidy list you can paste straight into a spreadsheet.
💡 Tip: tap a step’s number when you finish it — a green tick appears and your browser remembers how far you got.
- A free Cohere account. Sign-up needs an email address and is available on the Cohere website. The free trial comes with enough credits to run this workflow many times.
- A block of messy text containing at least five contacts. Good sources: a forwarded meeting email, a pasted conference attendee list, or a stack of email signatures from a recent thread.
- A web browser on a laptop or desktop. The Playground is much easier to use on a larger screen than on a phone.
- About 10 minutes of unhurried time. No coding or technical background is needed.
Create your Cohere account
Open the Cohere website in your browser and look for a Sign Up or Get Started button, usually in the top-right corner of the homepage. Click it and register with your email address, or pick Google or GitHub sign-in if those options are visible. After you confirm your email, Cohere drops you on a dashboard. This is your control center: it shows your credit balance (how many free uses you have left), any API keys (codes developers use to call Cohere from their own software — you can ignore these for this task), and links to the tools. If you already have an account, just sign in. If a "Tell us about yourself" survey appears, look for a small Skip link at the bottom to bypass it.
If your home screen shows API Keys or Billing first instead of a welcome page, you're still in the right place — use the left sidebar to find the rest of the tools.
You'll know it worked when you land on a page that shows your name in the top-right corner and a sidebar with at least one tool link.
Open the Playground
From your dashboard, look for a link or tile labeled Playground — sometimes called Try Cohere or Chat. Click it. A new page opens with a large text box on the left (where you'll type instructions) and an empty response area on the right. At the top of the page there's usually a dropdown menu to pick which Cohere model you want to use. Think of the Playground as a sandbox — a safe testing space where you can experiment without affecting any real system.
If you don't see a Playground link in the sidebar, look for a top navigation bar with options like Dashboard, Playground, API Keys, and Docs instead. If you land on a page full of code, you've opened the API reference — click the Playground tab to leave it.
You'll know it worked when you see a big empty text box and a button labeled something like Generate or Send.
Pick the Command model
At the top of the Playground, find the model dropdown — a small clickable box that lists available AI models (an AI model is the "brain" that reads your text and writes a response). Choose Command or Command-R if those options are visible, since those are best at following instructions for structured tasks. If newer model names appear, any of the "Command" family should work fine. Leave the other settings (temperature, max tokens) at their defaults for now — temperature controls how creative or predictable the output is, and max tokens controls how long the response can be. Defaults are safe.
If the dropdown only shows older model names like "generate" or "summarize", Cohere may have redesigned this part of the Playground — pick whichever current model is highlighted or marked as recommended.
You'll know it worked when the model name at the top of the page shows a "Command" option, and the right-hand response area is empty and ready.
Paste your messy text and ask for a clean list
Click inside the big text box on the left and paste your block of messy contact info. Then, on a new line below the text, write a short instruction telling the model what you want. The instruction is called a prompt — a prompt is simply the question or task you give an AI. Be specific: name the three things you want pulled out (names, emails, phone numbers) and the format you want them in.
If your Playground uses separate "System" and "User" boxes, put the instruction in the System box (which sets the AI's behavior for the whole conversation) and the messy text in the User box (which carries your actual request).
You'll know it worked when you press Send and the right-hand panel fills with text that lists each contact on its own line.
Read the answer and double-check it
Look at the response on the right. It should show one contact per line in the format you asked for. Read every line carefully — AI models can make small mistakes, especially with phone numbers that use unusual formatting or emails that look similar to each other. If anything is missing or wrong, that's normal; you can either fix it by hand or try the prompt again. To try again, click the small retry or regenerate button (often shaped like a circular arrow ↻) next to the response.
If the answer comes back as a paragraph instead of a list, your prompt wasn't specific enough — go back to Step 4, add the words "one contact per line" and "format: Name — Email — Phone", and try again.
You'll know it worked when the response shows every contact from your original text, neatly aligned, and any missing or wrong entries are easy to spot and correct.
Copy the clean list into your spreadsheet
Highlight the model's response with your mouse, copy it with Ctrl+C (Windows) or Cmd+C (Mac), then open your spreadsheet and paste it into the first cell with Ctrl+V or Cmd+V. If your pasted text uses dashes (—) as separators and your spreadsheet expects tabs or commas, you can split it into columns using your spreadsheet's "Text to Columns" feature — usually found under the Data menu.
If your spreadsheet pastes everything into a single column instead of three, run Text to Columns with the dash as the separator. If you don't have a spreadsheet, you can paste the list into a plain text file and still have a useful, organized record.
You'll know it worked when your spreadsheet shows one row per contact, with names, emails, and phone numbers sitting in their own neat columns.
- Asking for too many things at once. If your prompt asks for names, emails, phones, job titles, companies, and addresses in the same go, the model may drop some details. Split big tasks into smaller prompts to keep results accurate.
- Trusting the output blindly. AI models can misread a "1" as an "l" or skip a contact entirely. Always skim the clean list against your original text before you send anything.
- Pasting private info you wouldn't want stored. Free AI tools may log your inputs to improve their service. For sensitive contacts, replace names with initials or use a paid enterprise plan that promises not to train on your data.
Open the Cohere Playground, paste any short email containing three or more contacts, and run the prompt from Step 4. Watch the clean list appear — then paste it into a spreadsheet to see the time you just saved.
❓ Quick questions
How long does this take?
About 7 minutes — the guide has 6 steps, and you can tick each one off as you go.
Which tool do I need?
This guide uses Cohere Cohere — but the approach works very similarly in other AI assistants.
Do I need to prepare anything?
- A free Cohere account. Sign-up needs an email address and is available on the Cohere website. The free trial comes with enough credits to run this workflow many times.
- A block of messy text containing at least five contacts. Good sources: a forwarded meeting email, a pasted conference attendee list, or a stack of email signatures from a recent thread.
- A web browser on a laptop or desktop. The Playground is much easier to use on a larger screen than on a phone.
- About 10 minutes of unhurried time. No coding or technical background is needed.
What mistakes should I avoid?
- Asking for too many things at once. If your prompt asks for names, emails, phones, job titles, companies, and addresses in the same go, the model may drop some details. Split big tasks into smaller prompts to keep results accurate.
- Trusting the output blindly. AI models can misread a "1" as an "l" or skip a contact entirely. Always skim the clean list against your original text before you send anything.
- Pasting private info you wouldn't want stored. Free AI tools may log your inputs to improve their service. For sensitive contacts, replace names with initials or use a paid enterprise plan that promises not to train on your data.
Keep reading
✦ Original step-by-step guide by AI World HQ's AI editorial team. Written in plain language, reviewed for accuracy.
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