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How to “Download All” of the FREE eBooks and Resources in My FREE eBooks Giveaway

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As noted in my “Multi-Million FREE eBook Giveaway“ post, I am sharing with you how you can “Download All” of the FREE eBooks and resources I am including in my annual giveaway. Here’s a quick FAQ/How-To to help address many of these in one place as a way to make it as easy as possible for my readers to find what they need. I hope these help you out and address questions you have regarding the post.

1. Don’t you have a zip file with all of the ebooks included or a “Download All” button so I can download them at once?

  • ZIP File: No, I do not have a zip file of the docs stored somewhere for download and this is intentional for several reasons. Since the eBooks and resources themselves have been put together and are distributed by some incredible authors and publishers, ultimately, they have the rights to update, distribute, and manage their IP as they see fit.
    • Example 1: If an author finds a correction needed (think about a typo in code included in a book that needs to be updated), they can update their deliverable and put the new one up at the download site they control to ensure all future downloads have the current information.
    • Example #2: (This one has actually happened with some of the books I’ve blogged about earlier) Sometimes an author wants to distribute their book a different way (switch from a share they have to a distribution site like Lulu) to achieve scale, better metrics, whatever. As such, they have every right to have the downloads moved to that site for distribution and have the downloads come from there.
    • Example #3: The author/publisher chooses to no longer distribute the free eBook or chooses to charge at some point. Again, as the owners of the IP, they have every right to do so.
      • If I were to grab today’s versions of the books, put them in a zip file, and distribute them from my server as an example, I would now be removing the author’s or publisher’s rights to do any of the three items listed above (as well as many other examples not listed). Ultimately, I (nor anyone else) do not have the right to do this. This is why I always provide links directly to their distribution sites, wherever they are so, you can download from them. Yes, this can be a challenge at times as I need to go back and edit links from time to time as they move the resources, but it is still the right thing to do and I am happy to do so in support of the great efforts these authors and publishers have done to make these resources available to all of us for free.
  • Download All button: Sort of. I don’t have a “Download All” button specifically, since that would point to a single location, which I don’t provide based on the items above.
    • Alternative: Some of the readers of my blog in the past have pinged me offline and suggested enabling the use of multiple browser download plug-ins that are available or various PowerShell options to download a list of links automatically. In order to use these options though, you would need a list of the download links to the eBooks on the site. Since this does not change the author’s/publisher’s rights to control their IP and distribution since it still enables downloads directly from their sites, I am happy to provide you with the list of links to do this.
  • With this list of links, you should be able to use the browser plug-ins, etc. of your choice to download the full list in an automated way.

 

2. Are these time-bombed versions of the books?

  • No, the free versions of the resources are full-version and do not have a time-out feature in them, so you can continue to use them for as long as you choose.

3. “I work for a library, resource desk, etc. and would like to share these with others. Is it ok to share your links to these?” (or some flavor of this with different variations)

  • Absolutely. Please feel free to share the links to these resources; however, please read #1 above on why you can share the links, but don’t distribute the actual works themselves as an offline resource. Please help support these fantastic authors and publishers by downloading the latest versions directly from them.

4. Download experiences seem to vary based on the resource I am downloading. Why is this?

  • As noted in #1 above, I always link to the site where the author/publisher is making the work available for download. Some of these are here on the Microsoft TechNet or MSDN sites, some are from blogs, etc. Depending on where they come from, your download experience may vary.

5. “I tried to download an eBook or resource and it didn’t work.”

  • Some of these eBooks come from a variety of places, and sometimes there is very heavy traffic to some of them. Wait a few moments and try again. You can also try right-clicking on the download link and selecting “Open in New Tab” or “Save Target As” to try initiating the download that way as well.

Thank you again for being a reader of my Blog and I hope you find this year’s collection of FREE eBooks and other resources to be very helpful to you, your colleagues, friends, or family.

Thank you and have a wonderful day,

Eric Ligman - Follow me on TWITTER, LinkedIn, and Facebook
Director – Sales Excellence
Microsoft Corporation

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights

Comments

  • Anonymous
    July 12, 2016
    Thanks guysWe love Microsoft
  • Anonymous
    July 13, 2016
    Thank you Eric for providing this collection of useful eBooks.I'd just like to point out that the list containing the links includes duplicates thus resulting in downloading multiple eBooks twice.I did what I had to do to rectify it.Other than that thanks again!Rgds,Sameer
    • Anonymous
      July 18, 2016
      Thanks for the feedback and pointing out the duplicates. I have edited the master list of links to remove all duplicates. It should be 100% unique values now.
  • Anonymous
    July 13, 2016
    Or open that link inside FireFox, after you've installed the DownThemAll plugin, and use DownThemAll to download all those links from that link/file ;)
    • Anonymous
      July 28, 2016
      Thanks, this helped a lot!
    • Anonymous
      August 15, 2016
      I found this the best way to do it. Thanks!
  • Anonymous
    July 14, 2016
    The comment has been removed
    • Anonymous
      July 21, 2016
      Thanks for that. The --content-disposition option doesn't show using just the quick help, probably only in the manpage. Also used --tries=0
  • Anonymous
    July 15, 2016
    Downloaded uGet and used the text file list of links to download all, worked like a charm! Thank you for the resource.
    • Anonymous
      July 21, 2016
      Thanks Kevin. Downloaded uGet and it's working.
  • Anonymous
    July 20, 2016
    Hi Eric. Thanks for compiling this list and making it available. I tried downloading the .txt file but am getting an error. Is is still available? Thanks
  • Anonymous
    July 20, 2016
    On a mac, dump the links in a text file and from a terminal run:cat ebook-links.txt | xargs -I file curl -OL file
    • Anonymous
      July 26, 2016
      Any way to adjust the output so it appends the .pdf to the end of the filename? otherwise they're just a bunch of flat files.
  • Anonymous
    July 20, 2016
    Thanks. Microsoft Press
  • Anonymous
    July 20, 2016
    If you have a linux machine handy, you can grab all the files with their original names by dumping the ‘download them all’ list into a file and using wget. cd wget —content-disposition —input-file
    • Anonymous
      August 15, 2016
      cmd --> bash --> $wget --input-file MSFTFreeEbooks.txt --content-disposition )))Windows 10 AU is very cool!
  • Anonymous
    July 20, 2016
    Thanks you Eric.
  • Anonymous
    July 21, 2016
    A web page with descriptive links would have been nice/useful/inclusive/not confusing.
  • Anonymous
    July 21, 2016
    This is for Mr. LigmanThe following title is linked to a Technet Page, not directly to the eBook itself.Administrating Skype for Business Server 2015 Step by Step for Anyonehttp://ligman.me/29uHKKV
  • Anonymous
    July 21, 2016
    I appreciate the placing URLs in a file for automation.For next time if possible, might be nice to break them up into types (MOBI, PDF, ePub) as I only wanted PDFs but using wget it got everything.Thank,Ken
  • Anonymous
    July 22, 2016
    Thanks!
  • Anonymous
    July 22, 2016
    Unable to download
  • Anonymous
    July 23, 2016
    The comment has been removed
    • Anonymous
      July 24, 2016
      That's how convolution leads to downfall of microsoft. This is the main reason their products don't do well since a decade.
    • Anonymous
      July 28, 2016
      Even when things are given away for free at the generosity of the person, one can still get mad and complain.If you don't want to take the time to get this, you don't have to.
    • Anonymous
      August 01, 2016
      @Susan WadeYou do know of course that Eric does not owe you anything?! You are going on and on like a spoilt brat complaining about how things are not going your way. Compile your own list and host them on your site and create a "Download All". Problem solved.
    • Anonymous
      August 05, 2016
      The comment has been removed
    • Anonymous
      August 07, 2016
      Ugh
    • Anonymous
      August 10, 2016
      The comment has been removed
    • Anonymous
      August 12, 2016
      to be honest if your against having to learn how to do something like a simple script these books probably arnt for you...
    • Anonymous
      August 15, 2016
      Susan,If you want to compliant, just dont download all then, pick and choose the one you want.
    • Anonymous
      December 23, 2016
      Don't be so fussy! The stuff is free after all...
  • Anonymous
    July 26, 2016
    Could anyone let me know if there is a book on Word in this list? Sorry, it's a lot of links and I just figured that I would ask. Thanks if you can, no hard feelings if you can't!
  • Anonymous
    July 26, 2016
    Unable to download at all :(
  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2016
    This is a complete waste of time. Just set up one link or button and thats all you need. Cut the non-sense
  • Anonymous
    July 28, 2016
    Use the wget for windows and use the following to download all.wget -i MSFTFreeEbooks.txtEasiest option.
  • Anonymous
    July 30, 2016
    These are 404'shttp://ligman.me/1G0Cm7Thttp://ligman.me/1H32nUThttp://ligman.me/29yixk9http://ligman.me/29ci56Uhttp://ligman.me/29nW9L3http://ligman.me/29hV6ZMhttp://ligman.me/29d1qAVhttp://ligman.me/29pfpbI
  • Anonymous
    July 31, 2016
    Eric, firstly, THANK YOU!Second, I found three URLs you posted that end up 404'ing. They are:http://ligman.me/1G0Cm7Thttp://ligman.me/1H32nUThttp://ligman.me/29yixk9Thanks again.
  • Anonymous
    August 03, 2016
    If u want to download them all use the following steps : (u need IDM internet download manager to do this) 1- download the .txt file that has all the links 2 open IDM >> click Tasks >>> import >> from text file.3 locate the txt file that u downloaded 4 check them all and click OK ur done !
  • Anonymous
    August 03, 2016
    Hi, Eric. I'd like to thank you and Microsoft for wasting my time for over a year. As a result I will no longer use Microsoft products.Thank you and have a wonderful day.
  • Anonymous
    August 07, 2016
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    August 07, 2016
    Thanks so much for this sir! This would be a great source for us!
  • Anonymous
    August 09, 2016
    definitely amazing, i'm using jdownloader software to download all the e-books at the same time ;)Keep going!
  • Anonymous
    August 10, 2016
    Please provide the metadata / bibliographic data for the whole collection of books, e.g. in MARC21 format, bib tex or something similar. The metadata can be used to point to the books from library catalogs, etc.Please sent me an e-mail, if I missed them yet or when they are made available later on.
  • Anonymous
    August 16, 2016
    thanks a lot Mr. Eric Ligman
  • Anonymous
    August 23, 2016
    Hello and thanks for providing access to these books!Windows 10 does not have a "Save Target As" (that I could find) when Right-Click on the image above. However, if you Left-Click on the image it will open a web page with all the URLs / links and then you can Right-Click on the "list" web page and "Save Page As" or click "Save Page As" and these methods work fine.Thanks.Regards,
    • Anonymous
      August 23, 2016
      Also, as other have suggested, you can use a Download Manager to automatically download the book list. For example, I used Free Download Manager. Prepare for Ebook Download:1: Open the, "MSFTFreeEbooks.txt" saved previously.2: Select and Copy all of the doc URLs within the MSFTFreeEbooks.txt file.3: Bing / Search for, Download and install Free Download Manager (FDM).Note: Always perform a Custom (not default) install of Free / OpenSource SW and Uncheck / Unselect any additional "free SW" that might be installed with FDMOnce FDM is installed:1: Right-Click on the Free Download Manager's "Active Downloads" icon in the Windows System Tray.2: Select the option "Import list of URLs from clipboard Ctrl+Shift+V".3: Configure Download Group options and path to Download folder to copy the Ebooks to.4: Complete / accept the configuration, download path, etc.5: Start the Download6: Restart and/or note any downloads, paths to servers, etc. that fail to attempt again or report as bad URL / link7: DoneNote: * FDM will start 4 download session windows (default) that you can monitor the downloads with.* FDM will prompt you about zip files and notify about server download connection issues.* If a download fails, FDM will move on to the next download in the clipboard list
  • Anonymous
    September 27, 2016
    Thank you Eric for these! Keep up the great work!
  • Anonymous
    September 27, 2016
    Thank you
  • Anonymous
    November 16, 2016
    Thanks a lot! Much appreciated.
  • Anonymous
    November 28, 2016
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2017
    Thank you!
  • Anonymous
    January 18, 2017
    THANKS FOR YOR TIME!