Encarta Encyclopedia Free Software May 2026

Encarta was born from Microsoft's internal project in the late 1980s. After being rejected by Encyclopædia Britannica , Microsoft licensed text from Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia for its initial 1993 release.

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

Although mainly sold on CD-ROM and DVD, Microsoft experimented with free access models: Encarta Encyclopedia Free Software

: Included thousands of photos, illustrations, music clips, videos, and interactive animations.

: After the encyclopedia was discontinued, the online dictionary remained accessible for free until 2011 . Discontinuation and Legacy Encarta was born from Microsoft's internal project in

: Starting in 2000, a subset of the full encyclopedia was available for free online, supported by advertisements.

At its 2008 peak, contained over 62,000 articles and a massive library of multimedia assets. Although mainly sold on CD-ROM and DVD, Microsoft

: Microsoft released localized versions in several languages (e.g., German, Spanish, Japanese) and specialized products like Encarta Africana and Encarta Kids . The "Free" Versions