We all have been in a situation where the manual we were looking for is gone. It’s hard to keep track of manuals nowadays with technology dominating our lives. Now, don’t you worry because you can easily find manuals online!
It takes only a little preparation beforehand to find manuals online. It’s about using the best available resources to find free online manuals, and in this blog, we will share with you such resources.
Table of Content
Find Free Online Manuals: Things You Need
Preparing to Find Any Manual
Users often go to the search engine to find free online manuals, but it isn’t the best option. The best way to search for a manual is to find these two particular pieces of information beforehand:
- Name
- Model number
Here is an example. Let’s say you have to contact customer support with only the device on hand. To get the information you need, first, you will identify the device, correct? Similarly, such identifiers can get used to finding free manuals online on the internet.
Many electronic products prefer to keep this information hidden from plain view. But it is available if you need easy access. It is advisable to take a photo of any product information beforehand to avoid any mistakes.
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How to Locate The Product Information
The core information usually gets hidden on the backside, underside, or inside of a product. Turning the product to its backside usually reveals the information you need for smaller items.
For a particular item, checking its components can be helpful, too, as it allows you to trace parts. For products like washers, refrigerators, or dryers, checking the inside door should be the first stop for the information.
Trying to identify products by their brand name and images will always be a hassle. Hence gather information about an item in advance to save yourself from trouble.
How do I Use the Online User Manual?
Dissimilar to other consumer support channels, online user manuals are not maintained or operated or by anybody. Basically, they are uploaded online and any user can download them. Every necessary groundwork was done in the course of the creation and certain minor edits only can be expected. You can use the online user manual in the following ways:
- Place images, GIFs, and links to your online manual
- Enhance background colors to make it look more striking for your audiences. Also, you can add your logo, to certify that your manual indicates your brand identity.
- Customize your online manual’s domain name
- Add videos to display how to use your product or information system
- Embed your manual onto your website. In this way, your customers can read the information directly
- Add an assembly of extra interactive features to aid your users in the picture your content and follow such a manual with less effort.
- Insert a lead capture form to this digital manual so that you gain significant leads and have customers’ contact details in the event when you have product or system updates to share.
Top 5 Places to Find Manual For Free Online
After finding the model number and name, there are many places to look for user manuals online. Ensure that you carefully enter the information you have, all the places we are sharing are great resources, but a small number or character typo can bust your results.
Google
Google has always been the first place we visit when we search for a user manual. With the model number and name, you will be able to find the data successfully in Google.
You will get the official results after entering the data correctly. But, there are some situations where you may run into third-party websites, which will not let you access or download the user manual with ease.
How to solve this issue? You can try filtering your search results using the site: [manufacturers site] [device name] user manual.
Ensure that you avoid adding a space between the site, colon, and website address. The search operator will only search the specific website for the keywords you are utilizing. Sometimes you will also get links to video tutorials if they are available, which is a plus point.
Internet Archive Manual Library
With Archive.org, you will have to make a tradeoff with the precision that Google provides. But in exchange, you will get access to the vast array of old online manuals. It’s an excellent way to rediscover thousands of lost manuals. There is also a feature where you can trim down the search results to 500,000 results through filters.
Let’s say you couldn’t find the user manual through the model number. You can then use the filtering option to filter the search results by a year, which will provide the most precise margin. Once you have found the user manual, you can flip through the full text and see the contents across different views.
To create online manuals, you have the choice to download them in different formats for free.
Manuals Online
Manual Online’s most significant advantage is its categories. This site divides over 700,00 user manuals into twenty main categories that further get broken down into their device types.
If you want to use the model number, type it into the site’s search bar. The website will then suggest to you the manual that matches it. It will start recommending you before you even finish typing. It is seamless to click on the recommended result. Once you select a manufacturer, a search box is available to narrow it down to your chosen pdf files.
After finding your manual, you have the option to preview it, open it as a PDF manual, or print it. If you couldn’t find your required manual, there is an option to put in a request via the site’s support system.
Thousands of manuals from many top brands have gotten digitized and uploaded to this platform. You can find help from the website’s database. There is helpful advice and hints from other users on the site.
ManualsLib
ManualsLib has an impressive collection of over four million free manuals online. All these manuals are available in PDF format. While different sites focus on categories, ManualsLib tries to steer you towards manuals of your choice based on search results or brands.
ManualLib offers more once you have found your PDF manuals. Apart from offering standard options, it also enables you to maintain a manual library and bookmark specific pages after creating your account. There is even a ManualsLib app that you can download and use.
SafeManuals
SafeManuals provides more than 800,000 manuals that you can search and use. You can search manufacturers, browse the most popular brands. You can quickly go through its pages and download the manual in PDF format.
The website is simple but does provide better incentives, such as presenting you with a compelling reason to read a specific PDF manual.
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What Makes CloudTutorial a Great Online Manual Creating Tool?
CloudTutorial is an easy documentation tool for creating and dispensing operating procedures and manuals. It’s an all-in-one knowledge base platform that helps you manage and share your digital documentation. This tool, with its user’s intuitive editing traits and predefined templates, allows you to create instructions and guides in minutes.
It facilitates the extensive publication of such guides. Its competitive advantage is that you can speed up the distribution of know-how as well as create an engaged and active community owing to all its inbuilt co-operative features. Thus, you can empower your employees and customers to execute tasks at any time.
FAQs
Service manual helps technicians and other trained people maintain and repair home appliances, a computer, and a TV. These documents cover everything. Such documents are usually provided by a manufacturer.
A manufacturer should keep the following points in mind when creating an instruction manual.
- The objective of your instruction manual
- Think about what you want to include as instructions
- Keep your readers in mind
- Collaboration is essential
- Get organized
- Write clear instructions
- Add structure with the table of contents
- Add a visual aid to your manual
Brand manuals are documents that explain how brands should get presented in public and how people should come into contact with it.
Conclusion
When looking for manuals online, the free resources that we have shared will save a lot of time for you. What we have shared here are some of the best available resources to find free manuals from the database at any time.
When it comes to creating a digital user manual for your product and service, CloudTutorial is the best option that allows you to create online manuals to answer your customers’ queries.
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