Microsoft Office 365 Home Premium: A visual tour

In hopes of luring more users from Google Docs to Office 365, Microsoft has made a host of improvements to its cloud-friendly suite of productivity applications. Beyond adding stylus and touch support, Microsoft has boosted collaboration in Word, added new visualization tools to Excel, and made Outlook Facebook-friendly. For a more in-depth look, check out InfoWorld's hands-on review of the suite.

Word gets PDF friendly

Word now opens PDFs and makes content like paragraphs, lists, and tables act like Word documents.

Installable apps

You can now extend functionality in your Office apps with installable add-ons from the new Office Store. The Sulava Text Analyzer, for example, provides statistics for the selected block of text.

Threaded discussions

Word's updated markup system lets users use a discussion-thread format for easier tracking and discussion of changes to documents.

Cleaner reading

Microsoft has added a Read Mode to Word where text reflows automatically in columns to fit the screen. Tools like ribbons and menus are all but removed, but you have access to such functions as Define, Translate, and Search with Bing.

Pick up where you left off

One of Word's best new features: You can pick up right where you left off when editing a document.

Fill columns in a flash

With the new Flash Fill feature, Excel can recognize patterns and autocomplete the remaining data, sans formulas or macros.

Let Excel choose your views

Excel's new Recommend Charts feature is designed to recommend the most suitable charts based on patterns in your data. You can preview your data in different charts and graphs, then choose the view that best suits your needs.

Visualize your data quickly

Excel's new Quick Analysis Lens feature lets you get immediate and multiple visualizations for selected ranges of data.

Pull online pics into PowerPoint

You can now search your albums on Facebook, Flickr, and other online services from PowerPoint and add pictures directly to the document, eliminating the process of first saving images to your machine.

A new view for you

PowerPoint sports a new Presenter View, providing a tool for inconspicuously viewing your notes as you present your show to an audience.

Cleaner UI for Outlook

Microsoft has cleaned up Outlook's UI, so the process of dealing with piles of mail, contacts, and events is far less suffocating.

Outlook goes social

You can have Outlook automatically serve up your contacts’ updates to social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook.

Play the People Card

Microsoft has added a People Card feature, which combines multiple contacts into a single view. The idea is to reduce duplicate contacts while adding social context.

Simpler OneNote search

In OneNote, your notes are now automatically saved and fully searchable. You can find pages in a presentation, text in a picture, or a comment in an audio clip by typing in a keyword or phrase.