Owner's manual

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An owner's manual (also called an instruction manual or a user guide) is an instructional book or booklet that is supplied with almost all technologically advanced consumer products such as vehicles, home appliances and computer peripherals. Information contained in the owner's manual typically includes:

• Safety instructions; for liability reasons these can be extensive, often including warnings against performing operations that are ill-advised for product longevity or overall user safety reasons.
• Assembly instructions; for products that arrive in pieces for easier shipping.
• Installation instructions; for products that need to be installed in a home or workplace.
• Setup instructions; for devices that keep track of time or which maintain user accessible state.
• Instructions for normal or intended operations.
• Programming instructions; for microprocessor controlled products such as VCRs, programmable calculators, and synthesizers.
• Maintenance instructions.
• Troubleshooting instructions; for when the product does not work as expected.
• Service locations; for when the product requires repair by a factory authorized technician.
• Regulatory code compliance information; for example with respect to safety or electromagnetic interference.
• Product technical specifications.
• Warranty information; sometimes provided as a separate sheet.

Until the last decade or two of the twentieth century it was common for an owner's manual to include detailed repair information, such as a circuit diagram; however as products became more complex this information was gradually relegated to specialized service manuals, or dispensed with entirely, as devices became too inexpensive to be economically repaired.

Owner's manuals for simpler devices are often multilingual so that the same boxed product can be sold in many different markets. Sometimes the same manual is shipped with a range of related products so the manual will contain a number of sections that apply only to some particular model in the product range.

With the increasing complexity of modern devices, many owner's manuals have become so large that a separate quickstart guide is provided. Some owner's manuals for computer equipment are supplied on CD-ROM to cut down on manufacturing costs, since the owner is assumed to have a computer able to read the CD-ROM. Another trend is to supply instructional video material with the product, such as a videotape or DVD, along with the owner's manual.

Many businesses offer PDF copies of manuals that can be accessed or downloaded free of charge from their websites.