The ability of methanol molecules to convert easily to different products on metal or acid active sites is used for their characterization. In the article, a dependence between methanol conversion pathways and disposition of cobalt ions in aluminophosphate molecular sieves is discovered. Besides, the conversion of methanol to hydrocarbons is proposed as a test reaction for the elucidation of a change in cobalt isomorphously substituted CoAPSO molecular sieves.