Microsoft SharePoint book - Get them for free!

When talking about a Microsoft SharePoint book it’s not always about buying one... back in 2007 there was a huge library of "Downloadable content for Office SharePoint Server 2007" including the following topics:

  • Getting Started
  • Planning
  • Deployment
  • Operations
  • Security
  • Solutions

Sound like TechNet, right? You are right, the content of these books was a copy of selected content in the technical library as of the date listed for each book. So for the most relevant content you had to visit the technical library. Anyway it was a great possibility to get some SharePoint content as the library evolved over time. And the best thing: A RSS feed was available so you would definitely be up to date.

Now in 2010 we have "Downloadable content for SharePoint Server 2010" which was last updated in May 2010 including the following things right now:

  • Technical diagrams (SharePoint Server 2010)
  • Getting started with SharePoint Server 2010
  • Planning guide for SharePoint Server 2010
  • Upgrading to SharePoint Server 2010
  • Deployment guide for SharePoint Server 2010
  • Operations guide for SharePoint Server 2010
  • Technical reference for SharePoint Server 2010
  • Evaluation guide for SharePoint Server 2010 (white paper)
  • Using AAM URL redirection as part of the upgrade process (SharePoint Server 2010) (white paper)

Please visit the site for more details. Unfortunately you have to do it several times in order to be up to date since it doesn’t offer any notifications about changes. Some good sources to get a free Microsoft SharePoint book, right? But wait, there is another great source...

Not a Microsoft SharePoint book - but a download

The download center by Microsoft allows you to search for new downloads, in this case regarding SharePoint. The SharePoint search results can be sorted so you get the most recent downloads and a lot of them are documents (in different formats). And guess what? Well there is a possibility to get updates but it’s not a RSS feed... the download notifications are in my opinion too inexact and too complicated to setup compared to a RSS feed or even Twitter. I hope that changes over time...

Anyway it’s free and it’s great content so checking every week really doesn’t matter.

Summary

Ok we have three great sources if you want to get a Microsoft SharePoint book for free. The first two sources are downloadable content for SharePoint and they aren’t updated very often. But they are like books regarding the size of the document. The third source is the download center and the content is updated more often... often more than once a week. The size of the documents is smaller so you can keep up with the publishing rate.

Of course the best thing: It’s great and detailed content for free. Hope this helps you to stay up to date...

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