The User Manual is Dead. Long Live the User Manual.

Is the traditional user manual as we know it dead? I ask this as an honest question, wondering if my love for manuals has something to do with my generation.

The Microsoft Dynamics GP team moved from paper manuals to PDF based manuals some time ago. Like paper, the PDF manuals were completely updated with each release. Starting with GP 2015, not all the manuals were updated. Only manuals where the module had significant changes were updated and marked as GP 2015. Also, the manuals moved to an online location organized by version. This created a weird game of hide and seek where users had to open different version locations to find all the manuals.

With GP 2015 and GP 2016 more of the documentation has moved to blog posts, creating a real maze of information, not to mention that webpage links can be volatile. This trend isn't limited to Dynamics GP. For a while now, many new cars have been dumping the paper manual for DVD's, for example, and O'Reilly media has an entire series of books labeled the "Missing Manual".

I confess to being a manual reader. It's how I found out that my MINI Cooper has a secret storage compartment. The GP Planning for Security manual is where I show people how to add a user without being ‘sa'. Being "in the manual" gives authority to the solution. It makes something official in people's minds.

But as the world changes, I wonder. When I buy something small, say a flashlight, and it comes with a tiny, barely decipherable manual, I feel like the manual is a waste. On ...