"The business intelligence capabilities in Excel look pretty promising," said industry analyst Michael Osterman from Osterman Research.

Overall, the new Excel will make more accessible to more employees a number of sophisticated features that until now have been mostly limited to sophisticated "power users", Webster said.

PowerPoint now features more native graphics features and functionality, letting users do layouts, charts and formatting that previously had to be done in external graphic design and illustration applications. A new "presenter view" lets speakers view slide notes while keeping them hidden from the audience.

It is also possible in the new PowerPoint and Word for colleagues to collaborate on a presentation or document by not only posting comments on them but also responding to them in a threaded manner, which is intended to make editing more collaborative and effective.