Microsoft Reader
application for reading e-books
Microsoft Reader is a discontinued Microsoft application for reading e-books, first released in August 2000, that used its own .LIT format. It was available for Windows computers and Pocket PC PDAs. The name was also used later for an unrelated application for reading PDF and XPS files, first released with Windows 8 – this app was discontinued in 2018.
E-book Reader
The e-book reader was available for download from Microsoft as a free application for computers running Windows and on PDAs running Pocket PC, where it has been built into the ROM since Windows CE 3.0. Microsoft Reader was compatible with Windows Mobile, but was not supported on newer Windows Phone 7 devices.
Microsoft Reader displays books in the .LIT (shortened from "literature") format, an extension of the Microsoft Compressed HTML Help format to include DRM. These e-books can be purchased and downloaded from online stores.
The notable features of Microsoft Reader are ClearType for increased readability on small screens, highlighting and doodling designed for quick note-taking, text notes, and searching. The PC version also has an optional plug-in for text-to-speech, enabling books to be read out loud.
Companies such as Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com partnered with Microsoft to provide books in the format when released in 2000.
In August 2011, Microsoft announced they were discontinuing both Microsoft Reader and the use of the .lit format for ebooks at the end of August 2012, and ending sales of the format on November 8, 2011.
“Microsoft Reader” enters the record as application for reading e-books. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Microsoft, Reader and application can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1584816. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2000, 2018, 2011 and 2012.
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This entry incorporates text from “Microsoft Reader” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.