In Monday's blog post, Microsoft specifically highlighted improved rendering of graphics, images and layouts in Word, as well as new capabilities to view and add comments to documents.

Meanwhile, Excel offers what Microsoft calls "essential" spreadsheet features such as merging cells and auto-fitting of columns, while PowerPoint now lets users play back video and audio from presentations, as well as do joint editing and commenting for collaboration. OneNote now features the ability to search on a page or within a section.

Microsoft also said it improved the performance of Office Web Apps, so that basic operations such as typing and formatting don't slow down as documents get larger. The performance improvements are particularly noticeable in Excel and PowerPoint, according to Microsoft.

Office Web Apps is used by about 50 million people per month, according to Microsoft.

The IDG News Service