Microsoft Encarta is a digital multimedia encyclopedia published by Microsoft Corporation since 1993. , the complete English version, Encarta Premium consists of more than 62,000 articles, Encarta 2009 Information numerous photos and illustrations, music clips, videos, interactivities, timelines, maps and atlas, and homework tools, and is available on the World Wide Web by yearly subscription or by purchase on DVD-ROM or multiple CD-ROMs. Many articles could also be viewed online free of charge, a service supported by advertisements.

Microsoft publishes similar encyclopedias under the Encarta trademark in various languages, including German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese and Japanese. Localized versions may contain contents licensed from available national sources and may contain more or less content than the full English version. For example, the Dutch version has content from the Dutch Winkler Prins encyclopedia.

In March 2009, Microsoft announced it was discontinuing the Encarta disc and online versions.Important Notice: MSN Encarta to be Discontinued (MSN Encarta)

History

Following the first multimedia Academic American Encyclopedia,

Microsoft initiated Encarta by purchasing non-exclusive rights to the Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia, incorporating it into its first edition in 1993. (Funk & Wagnalls continued to publish revised editions for several years independently of Encarta, but then ceased printing in the late 1990s.) Funk & Wagnalls had been a third-tier encyclopedia available at cut rates in grocery stores, where volumes were sold individually as well as in one collected set. The name Encarta was created for Microsoft by an advertising agency, which decided that it sounded better than Funk & Wagnalls. Microsoft had originally approached Encyclopædia Britannica, the gold standard of encyclopedias for over a century, in the 1980s, but it declined, believing its print media sales would be hurt; however the Benton Foundation was forced to sell Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. at below book value in 1996 when the print sales could no longer compete with Encarta and the Microsoft distribution channel which focused on bundling copies with new computer systems.

In the late 1990s, Microsoft bought Collier's Encyclopedia and New Merit Scholar's Encyclopedia from Macmillan and incorporated them into Encarta. Thus the current Microsoft Encarta can be considered the successor of the Funk and Wagnalls, Collier, and New Merit Scholar encyclopedias. None of these formerly successful encyclopedias remained in print for long after being merged into Encarta.