The Yongle Canon began to be compiled in the first year of the Ming Yongle Dynasty (1403). At that time, Emperor Chengzu of Ming had just seized power from his nephew, Emperor Jianwen. In order to express that he talked about revising culture and governance to win people's hearts, he ordered Xie Jin and others to edit the book. Finished in 1404, it was named "Document Dacheng". Soon Emperor Chengzu of Ming Zhu Di thought that the content of the book was not detailed enough and did not match the original intention of revising the book, so he sent more Crown Prince and Young Master Yao Guangxiao to participate and re-edited it. This time, more than 2,100 people participated in the editing and copying, which took 5 years. Yu Yongle completed it on December 14, 1408, with 22,877 volumes of text, 60 volumes of ordinary and catalogue, a total of nearly 22,900 volumes or more, packed into 11,095 volumes, with a total word count of about 370 million words, and was given the name "Yongle Canon".

This book is a large-scale genre unprecedented in the history of our country. Collect and record seven to eight thousand music collections, including classics, history, poetry, collections, interpretation, Taoism, opera, Pinghua, medical divination, engineering techniques, agronomy and other works. The collection is extensive and the information is abundant.

The style of the book is based on the rhyme part of "Hongwu Zhengyun" written by the official in the early Ming Dynasty, and the information is arranged and compiled according to the rhyme times. That is: take the word as the head, take the rhyme as the word, detail the phonetic and meaning under each word, and record the character seal, li, kai, grass various fonts, and then classify and collect the astronomy, geography, personnel, famous objects, poets, lyrics and allusions related to the word, that is, the name of the word. As the general catalogue of Siku Quanshu states: "Or use one word and one sentence to divide the rhyme. Or extract one, and divide the rhyme by the title of the article." Or "record a book, and divide the rhyme by the name of the book." Generally in line with what ordinary people say "Use rhyme to unify the words, and use words to connect things." However, "Siku Quanshu Zongmu" believes that it rhymes from time to time with words, from time to time with the title of the article, and from time to time with the name of the book, "fragmented and complex, disorganized", and "uneven and disorganized".

However, the book collects ancient books, the title of the book, and the author are all written in red letters, which is quite eye-catching; it is not easy to quote documents in sections and even in the whole book. Especially the secret books of Anwen before the Yuan Dynasty, which are not passed down in the world, all rely on the income of the whole book, which is very complete, and preserves a large number of precious ancient documents and materials, and the provenance is clear. When the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty compiled the "Siku Quanshu", a lot of lost books were compiled from it, and those that have been included in the "Siku Quanshu" are: 66 kinds of scriptures, 41 kinds of history, 103 kinds of sub-parts, 175 kinds of collection, a total of 385 kinds, 4926 volumes. There are more than 100 books included in the "inventory". Later, some people continued to compile lost books from the "treasure house" of "Yongle Dadian", which shows the great value and contribution of "Yongle Dadian" in preserving ancient documents and materials.

"Yongle Grand Ceremony" has only a manuscript but no printed edition. Originally, only one copy was copied. During the Jiajing period of Emperor Shizong of the Ming Dynasty, two copies were copied. The original copy was moved back to Nanjing. The original was stored in Wenyuan Pavilion, and the copy was stored in the Emperor's History. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, both the original and copy were destroyed, leaving only one original copy. During the Qianlong period, it was already incomplete. Later, the British and French allied forces and the Eight-Power Allied Forces invaded Beijing twice and robbed and burned the book twice. Only 64 volumes were left during the Guangxu period. Later, after extensive searches, donations and returns from all parties, plus copies, a total of more than 730 volumes were obtained. In 1959, they were photocopied and published by Zhonghua Publishing Company, and the prints were only more than 3% of the original book. After that, Zhonghua Book Company successively received more than 60 volumes and photocopied them for publication.