How You Can “Download All” of the Microsoft eBooks I posted
Ever since I put up my “I'm Giving Away Millions of FREE eBooks" post, I have once again been receiving a flood of fantastic comments and feedback about the resources, as well as several questions. 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 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, some are from their OneDrive folder, 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.
Hopefully this helps address several of the questions you may have. If not, please feel free to send them in through the comments section below.
Did you find this information helpful? If so, you may want to make sure you are utilizing all of the areas I share information online, such as:
Thanks again for being a reader of my blog!
Thank you and have a wonderful day,
Eric Ligman – Follow me on TWITTER, LinkedIn, and Facebook
Senior Sales Excellence Manager
Microsoft Corporation
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights
Bookmark on: MSDN , TechNet, and Expression
Comments
Anonymous
July 09, 2015
Thank you again !!!Anonymous
July 09, 2015
THX alotAnonymous
July 09, 2015
Thank you for providing this: btw.: wget -i listofdownloadlinks does the job :DAnonymous
July 10, 2015
I took your download list and added "start" in front of each HTTP, then just pasted it into a command window. All PDF's download and show up in the downloads folder of the browser. thanksAnonymous
July 10, 2015
Links are kinda useless without a description.Anonymous
July 10, 2015
Hello, Try saving the MSFTEbooks2.txt file, and then running "wget -i MSFTEbooks2.txt" to download them all. If wget is not installed on your system, more information is available from www.gnu.org/.../wget, including links to download a Win32 binary version from SourceForge. Regards, Aryeh GoretskyAnonymous
July 11, 2015
Thank you joeboy. Nice trick to download them all. No download manager needed :)Anonymous
July 12, 2015
thanks JoeAnonymous
July 12, 2015
Firefox Addon "DownThemAll" erledigt dies mit einem Klick :-) Danke!- Anonymous
August 09, 2016
Thanks for the tip. Worked great. If you use "DownThemAll", don't forget to donate.
- Anonymous
Anonymous
July 14, 2015
The "Wget64.exe" works great with the above text file. I used "wget64 -I MSFTEbooks.txt" and had everything in a few minutes. Slick! Thanks for the tip Aryeh!Anonymous
July 15, 2015
Thanks Eric Ligman for work and Aryeh Goretsky for tip.Anonymous
July 19, 2015
This great. Thank you very much.Anonymous
July 20, 2015
Thanks Eric, you are a gentleman and a scholar.Anonymous
July 22, 2015
Thanks Eric for this.Anonymous
August 06, 2015
It wants you to login for the free books. How do you do this? Or what is the login.Anonymous
August 17, 2015
The comment has been removedAnonymous
December 18, 2015
More books than I have time to read, but: Thank you very much! :-)Anonymous
December 31, 2015
muchas graciasAnonymous
February 16, 2016
Than you so much as i recently retired and these books are valuable assets to help me with my hobbyAnonymous
March 11, 2016
THANKSAnonymous
March 11, 2016
thanksAnonymous
June 30, 2016
thanksAnonymous
July 08, 2016
ThanksAnonymous
September 27, 2016
Thanks for the huge share, appreciated.