Documents are stored in Microsoft's SkyDrive service by default, but users can choose to store them locally as well, said Microsoft's Kirk Koenigsbauer, who gave a 30-minute tour of the new Office.

Microsoft has also embedded some communications functions into Word. For example, if users are collaborating on a document and one of them edits a sentence, another user can tap the sentence and a box pops up showing who made the edits. The box includes presence information for that person, and if they're online at that moment, the user can send them an instant message from within Word.

Word also includes a new reading mode that mimics some of the features in Amazon's Kindle. Tapping the screen lets the user dim the background or change its color. For example, in the dark, the user can make the background black and the text white.

The cloud apps can also be accessed from a smartphone, and in that case the new Word will format the text to fit the screen and put it in landscape mode if that's how the device is oriented.

SharePoint, an application for managing documents, creating workflows and other business functions, also gets a big makeover. The interface resembles that of Facebook, right down to the blue coloring, although it's a different shade of blue. Users can "like" and comment on documents that others have authored, much as Facebook users can comment on a status update.