Improvements in the suite, which includes online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, center on four areas: document authoring, touch interface support, collaboration and performance, Microsoft said on Friday.

Office Web Apps, launched about two years ago and used by about 50 million people per month, includes a subset of the functionality of the applications in the full-featured, PC-installed Office suite.

As a cloud-hosted suite, Office Web Apps have been enhanced regularly on the backend by Microsoft, but the set of improvements being tested now are significant, according to a blog post by Mike Morton, group program manager for Office Web Applications at Microsoft.

"This update is by far the most significant we have ever done and we hope others are as excited about the changes as we are," he .

In the area of authoring, Microsoft has made improvements so documents can look more professional by improving editing, layout and formatting capabilities.