Encarta Encyclopedia Free Software May 2026

At its 2008 peak, contained over 62,000 articles and a massive library of multimedia assets.

: It originally debuted at $395 , though this price quickly dropped to $99 as it became frequently bundled with new multimedia PCs. Encarta Encyclopedia Free Software

Although mainly sold on CD-ROM and DVD, Microsoft experimented with free access models: At its 2008 peak, contained over 62,000 articles

: Starting in 2000, a subset of the full encyclopedia was available for free online, supported by advertisements. Historical Overview and Development : An abridged online

Microsoft Encarta was a digital multimedia encyclopedia published by Microsoft from . While it was primarily a paid commercial product, limited free versions existed through the Encarta Concise Encyclopedia online and ad-supported web articles before its eventual discontinuation. Today, the software is considered abandonware and is often found for free on archival sites like Internet Archive . Historical Overview and Development

: An abridged online version offering around 16,000 articles for free to students and teachers.