The site has a points system, you can get points for uploading your manuals to the site and you can spend your points on downloading other people's manuals. With one point, you can download or view any manual on the site. To do this, go to the page of the manual you want and click the "Download" or "Unhide" button. If you have points left, then after clicking "Download", the file will start downloading, and after clicking "Unhide", previously hidden document pages will appear on the page.
- Sign up on Manualmachine. You will get 5 points for registering on the site. To receive points, you should sign up using Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail or Outlook email addresses. Read more.
- Upload your manuals to the site. If you upload manuals that are not already uploaded by someone else on the site, you get one point for each of your uploaded manuals. On how to upload your files to the site, check here.
- You will get one point every time someone downloads your manual.
- Buy. You can buy as many points as you want on this page.
You get 5 points for signing up if:
- You signed up on the site using the "Sign up with Google" or "Sign up with Facebook" button.
- You signed up on the site using an email address from any of the popular email service providers – Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, or Outlook. If your email address is not from among the popular ones, you won't get points after registering. This requirement is to prevent mass auto registration on Manualmachine.
No, you don't. After buying a manual, you can always download or view it many times for free on your profile.
The "Download" and "Unhide" buttons are equivalent. After clicking any of these buttons, you will always have access to viewing and downloading the manual.
Your profile has a page with a history of your points.
- Sign up on the site
- Go to the "My files" page
- Click "Upload" and select the manual(s) on your computer. You can only upload manual(s) in pdf format.
- Right after you've uploaded your file, it will be assigned the "In Progress" status. Wait until your file has been verified. This usually takes a few seconds.
- If after verification, the file status changes to "File already exists", it means this file already exists on the site and you’ll not receive a point for your upload.
- If after verification, the file status changes to "Fill in the brand, model and type fields", it means there is no such file on the site yet and you need to fill in table fields "Brand", "Model", and "Type". To start editing a cell, double-click on it. To save changes in a cell, press Enter or move to another cell.
- Brand – write the brand that this manual refers to. For example, "Dell".
- Model – write the model of the device. For example, "XPS 15"
- Type – write the type of manual. For example, "User manual", "Service manual", etc.
- After filling in all the fields, the file status will change to "Approved" and you will automatically receive one point for each added file.
All the files uploaded by you on Manualmachine are displayed in a table. Working with this table is much similar to working with an MS Excel table. Just like in Excel, you can select cells, copy and paste data, change column order and width.
Combine all manuals into a single archive file and upload them to the site using the "Upload" button. After uploading the archive file, its contents will be automatically unpacked.
- You can only upload archive files in zip or rar formats
- An archive file can't be more than 10GB. If it is larger, then pack the files into several archives of 10Gb each.
- Nested archives are allowed. Archives inside archives will be unpacked automatically.
- All non-pdf files in archives will be automatically deleted when unpacking.
We accept only pdf files. If you have manuals in a different format, please convert them to pdf. There are many online tools for this. For example:
The "Points" row:
"For files" – is the number of points you received for uploading files to the site. This number may not be the same as the number of "Approved" files, since if one file has several models, they will be counted separately in the "Approved" counter, but will be counted as one in the "For files" counter.
"For downloads" – is the number of points that you received for your manuals that were downloaded by other users.
"Total" – is the total number of your points. It is equal to the sum of all the points that you’ve received in various ways minus the points you've spent on downloads.
The "Files" row:
"All" – total number of files you added. It is counted as the number of rows in the table
"Approved" – number of accepted files
"Uploaded" – number of files that are awaiting some action from you.
"Deleted" – number of deleted files.
The file table is flexible. You can:
- Change the width of table columns. To do this, drag the right border of the column heading in the table with your cursor to the desired width.
- Rearrange the order of table columns. To do this, drag the name of the column with the cursor.
- Hide unused columns. Go to the table header menu and uncheck the columns you want to hide.
- Filter rows. Click the "Filter" button above the table to display the filter fields.
- You can reset all table settings to default using the "Reset Table Layout" button situated above the table.
There is a menu above the table with file managing buttons:
- "Upload" – upload new files to the site
- "Delete" – delete files. Before you click Delete, tick the checkboxes of the files you want to delete
- "Filter" – show or hide the file filter
- "Split" – split the models listed with commas into separate table rows. For example, you have a manual for several models of any device "PET730, PET732, PET735"; after clicking "Split", this manual will be divided into separate models "PET730" "PET732" "PET735".
- "Reset Table Layout" – reset the width and display order of the table columns to default settings.
Read here on how to check multiple checkboxes at once.
To perform "Delete" and "Split" operations, tick the checkboxes of the files in question. If there are many files, then you can select multiple files at once in two ways.
First method:
- Enable the filter and, if possible, filter only the rows that you want to select.
- Tick the checkbox in the table header, all filtered rows will be selected.
Second method:
- Check the first file you need
- Select any cell of the last file you need and press Shift + Space - all files in this range will be selected
The file table has the following columns:
- File – Name of the pdf file you uploaded.
- Brand – Brand of the device to which the manual applies
- Model – Model of the device
- Type – Type of manual. For example, "User Manual", "Service manual", "Schematic, "Parts Catalog", etc.
- Status – File status. Descriptions of file statuses are listed below.
- Actions – Action buttons. 1) View file on the website 2) Download file 3) View pdf file in a browser. These buttons are useful while filling in the Brand, Model, and Type fields. With them, you can open a pdf file, copy and paste the brand and model.
- Date – (hidden column by default) The date the file was uploaded to the site. Can be used to filter files for a specific date.
- Hash – (hidden column by default) File hash.
- ID – (hidden column by default) ID of the file on the site.
Hidden columns can be enabled in the table settings.
A file can have one of the following statuses:
- Approved – the file has been accepted and 1 point has been given to you for uploading it.
- In Progress – the file is being processed. After processing, its status will automatically change.
- Unpacking. Please wait – zip or rar archive is being unpacked.
- Fill out brand, model and type – the file is waiting for you to fill in the Brand, Model, and Type fields.
- Awaiting moderation – file is awaiting moderation.
- Please fix file description. There is an error in the brand, model or type field – this status appears if the moderator found an error in the Brand, Model, or Type field. You need to fix the error.
- File already exists – a file with this hash already exists in the database.
- File is corrupted – the file is damaged and could not be repaired.
- Deleted by owner – the file was deleted by the owner.
- Deleted by admin – the file was deleted by the admin.
- File banned – the file was blocked by the admin. You cannot add such a file to the site again.
Sometimes, one manual could be intended for several models of equipment. To describe this situation correctly, do the following:
- List all the models separated by commas. For example, "P552E, P552C, K550V"
- Tick the checkboxes of this file and click the "Split" button above the table. The manual will be split into three separate rows
In the file table, you can copy and paste multiple cells at once. For example, you can edit models in a text editor on your computer in the following way:
- Select the required range of cells and copy them to the clipboard
- Paste data from the clipboard into the text editor
- Edit the data as you want. For example, you can use the find and replace feature, text editor macros, etc.
- Copy the edited text from the text editor to the clipboard
- Select the first cell of the range
- Insert the cells back into the table
In the file table, you can insert text into multiple cells at once. To do this:
- Copy the desired text to the clipboard
- Select the required cells
- Paste the text from the clipboard. The text will be copied to all selected cells at once
This works with any cell from the Brand, Model, and Type columns.
The site has a system for automatically filling in the "Brand", "Model", and "Type" fields. This system tries to determine the "Brand", "Model", and "Type" of each file by the name of the pdf file. It looks for the brand at the beginning of the file name (for example ASUS, HP, Canon, etc.), and looks for the type at the end of the file name (for example, User Manual, Service Manual, Schematics, etc.). If it finds both the brand and the type in the file name, then all the text between them is taken as the model. For example, you uploaded the file “01 canon 600d user manual camera.pdf”, then the fields will be automatically filled as follows:
- Brand = Canon
- Model = 600d
- Type = User Manual
Autofill works a little differently if the files you uploaded to Manualmachine are in an archive file. In this case, the system searches for "Brand", "Model", and "Type" in the full path of the file in the archive. For example, you uploaded archive file "arch.zip" containing the main file "service_guide.pdf" at the location "arch.zip/canon/600d/service_guide.pdf". In this case, the fields will be automatically completed as follows:
- Brand = Canon
- Model = 600d
- Type = Service Guide
For the archive "asus.zip/Q550LF/manual.pdf", the fields will be automatically completed as follows:
- Brand = ASUS
- Model = Q550LF
- Type = User Manual
You can make use of the following hotkeys on the "My files" page:
- Shift+U – Upload files
- Shift+D – Delete files
- Shift+F – hide/show filter
- Shift+S – Split files
- Arrows – Navigation through table cells
- Space – Tick the checkbox of a file
- Shift + Space – Tick the checkboxes of multiple files. More details here.
- Enter – Start/stop editing the current cell
- Esc – Cancel editing of the current cell
- Ctrl + Z – Undo changes to a cell
- Ctrl + Y – Redo changes to a cell
- Ctrl + С – Copy the contents of the selected cells to the clipboard
- Ctrl + V – Paste data from the clipboard into cells
If you’ve already uploaded a lot of files, and you've added new ones, the new files can sometimes mix up with the old ones, making it difficult to work with the new ones. In this case, you can make only the files uploaded today to be displayed in the table. To do this:
- Go to the table settings by clicking the
icon in the table header - In the table settings, enable the "Date" column
- Click the "Filter" button above the table to enable the filter
- In the "Date" column filter, select the current date
- Only the files that were uploaded today will remain in the table.
Once you have edited a cell, its background turns blue, which means that the changes are being transmitted to the server. As soon as the changes are saved on the server, the cell background becomes white again. If you close the browser tab before the cells turn white, you will lose any changes you’ve made.