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Where are the current PDF download manuals for Adobe Elements 2021

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
December 12, 2020
9 replies
16158 views

The latest download PDF manuals for Adobe Elements Organizer, Photoshop Elements, and Premiere Elements appears to be an old link to 2018 manuals. Where do we find a current link to the Adobe Elements 2021 Bundled programs?

Correct answer MichelBParis

It's a shame since the online help is is not user friendly at all, i.e. it's much faster just to google

than try top find the answer in the online help and that applies to all Adobe products, not just photoshop elements.

Yes, those pdf manuals should be available any time with a few clicks when you are edting or organizing. They require a lot of work from Adobe, but I think the present state of customer support is not only based on cutting costs, it's also based on a belief that online help is better. That may be true for the ease of details updating, but the sad reality is that the belief that AI can be used successfully to guide searches simply does not work.

Today, you are always better off using any search engine like Google than Adobe.

Finding help or learning about a feature from the hierarchical structure of the online help is totally inadequate.

So, what could Adobe software users do?

- complain heavily for the lack of pdf docs.

- download today the last existing versions while they are available. (Note: the links do download the pdfs directly without warning, at least for me). Save the links and create shortcuts.

- learn to use Google or similar search. Including 'Helpx' in the search box makes you search in the Adobe help docs.

- Sorry to mention that the Welcome part of Elements has the best of Adobe search. Bypassing it from a shortcut to save a minute to start an editing session is missing a good opportunity.

- Use the shortcuts often included in the menus for contextual help

What Adobe should do:

- Make more links directly available in the 'Help' menus.

- Prompt users to download the manuals at the end of the install process

- Make the text search line in the Welcome screen available from the F1 key; it's about the only 'AI' Adobe help useful feature.

- Add more links for contextual help in the menus.

- Work to make AI be more useful in the user to user forums; I mean the suggested similar discussions listed on the right of this forum.

Greg_S.

Community Expert

@nrezmerski Photoshop Elements is not an Adobe CC product. If you are not aware of that, perhaps writing an unofficial manual for Elements may not be for you. 😉

N

nrezmerski

Participating Frequently

Thanks for enlightening me! I was thinking of Photoshop Express. Anyway I am soliciting advance feedback from people who would prefer PDF manuals for whatever apps they prefer. Are you happy with Adobe's current help/user guide format?

Glenn 8675309

Legend

I'm so happy with it it makes my skin tingly just thinking about it....

T

The One True raywood

Known Participant

I found a PDF manual for Premiere Elements 2019-2020.

Glenn 8675309

Legend

I made this last year using PSE 2021, it's a big pdf, and I think it's a good resource: (It's over 100MB that's why there is a link to it in my drop box). It's a work in progress, always, but you should find it informative.

This covers most of the basics, I didn't have the itnerest to complete one for PSE really doesn't appear to be the need or desire.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/jy8bzkekfu45z29988bgm/final-version-ch1-6.pdf?rlkey=mvfruuone3elih8fro5qixp2a&st=jhlvx382&dl=0

L

LemonPeelerAuthor

Known Participant

Glenn, thank you for sharing a great resource! I'm sure this has taken an incredible amount of time and we do appreciate your efforts to help make up for the shortcomings of the Adobe help features.

Glenn 8675309

Legend

It's justthe way I do things-- if you find it simple to use, and understand then it's "mission accomplished"!

H

hughb3864073

Participant

For me Adobe Export PDF is a waste of time and money. It is far easier and far less frustrating

just to recreate Excel or Word documents from scratch. Not user friendly at all.

Greg_S.

Community Expert

@Glenn 8675309, I have taken a look at your excellent manual and if you don't mind, I will bookmark it and refer others to view it. (I hope you don't mind but I have added a few comments to correct what I believe are some errors.) Perhaps when you have completed your opus, you should start a new thread with it so that it will not be buried in this one.

Glenn 8675309

Legend

That's all fine, go ahead. In a photoshop elements group on facebook, many of of the users are a bit older (50+) and were often compaining abotu spending hours watching youtube videos on various things, and still not understanding it. I started making screenshots of various things and people said they liked it, so I kinda ran with it.

Of course I always explain there are typically 3 or 4 ways of doing what I show- I just talk about the way I like doing things. That doesn't make my way any better, or worse than your way of doing it--- I like using the paint bucket A LOT.

I also have been posting a "Daily Cup of knowledge" simple, 1 post a day- all the info must fit on that one graphic.

In the facebook group people will often take a photo of their screen, with their phone- and it often doesn't show what is needed, or is out of focus, or is too small...

Glenn 8675309

Legend

I actualy started making my own user friendly help manual.... designed for new users. Lots of pictures, answers lots of the basic quiestions new users have. I used PSE 2020 to start it with.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/320x7zt5rz670br/ch1%20and%20ch2%20%20an%20ch3%20.pdf?dl=0

Below is one of the pages from the "manual"--- alot of the last bunch of pages are blank- and the table of contents is not completly updated.

The users is this group could easilly "crowdsource" our own, user freindly manual. The adobe help stuff is pretty dry.

B

Borcht

Participant

Dear Glenn,

I just purchased "Adobe Photoshop Elements 2021" and have a need for a user manual.

Would you allow me to download your Manual?
If so, can you please let me know how to do this.

At my age (86) I do have practical problems with the growing complexity of, in this case finding a simple user manual for Elements.

Thanks for reply and your help!

Harry Briels

Keerbergen, Belgium

Glenn 8675309

Legend

Be my guest, it's in my drop box, I think you will like it!

MichelBParis

Correct answer

Community Expert

It's a shame since the online help is is not user friendly at all, i.e. it's much faster just to google

than try top find the answer in the online help and that applies to all Adobe products, not just photoshop elements.

Yes, those pdf manuals should be available any time with a few clicks when you are edting or organizing. They require a lot of work from Adobe, but I think the present state of customer support is not only based on cutting costs, it's also based on a belief that online help is better. That may be true for the ease of details updating, but the sad reality is that the belief that AI can be used successfully to guide searches simply does not work.

Today, you are always better off using any search engine like Google than Adobe.

Finding help or learning about a feature from the hierarchical structure of the online help is totally inadequate.

So, what could Adobe software users do?

- complain heavily for the lack of pdf docs.

- download today the last existing versions while they are available. (Note: the links do download the pdfs directly without warning, at least for me). Save the links and create shortcuts.

- learn to use Google or similar search. Including 'Helpx' in the search box makes you search in the Adobe help docs.

- Sorry to mention that the Welcome part of Elements has the best of Adobe search. Bypassing it from a shortcut to save a minute to start an editing session is missing a good opportunity.

- Use the shortcuts often included in the menus for contextual help

What Adobe should do:

- Make more links directly available in the 'Help' menus.

- Prompt users to download the manuals at the end of the install process

- Make the text search line in the Welcome screen available from the F1 key; it's about the only 'AI' Adobe help useful feature.

- Add more links for contextual help in the menus.

- Work to make AI be more useful in the user to user forums; I mean the suggested similar discussions listed on the right of this forum.

L

LemonPeelerAuthor

Known Participant

Thank you so much for the thoughtful reply. It is hard to believe that such a mainstream application doesn't have an effective help manual. As many have stated, a simple Google search is more helpful than the integrated help. This is almost inexcusable for a complex product like these. At very least, they could provide a search feature for each product that would constrain the search to the online manual for that product! We hope they give ear to your suggestions.

John Waller

Community Expert

>>>It is hard to believe that such a mainstream application doesn't have an effective help manual.

I'm finding that's the norm rather than the exception across the board for most apps I use: Adobe, Microsoft and many others.

While major software vendors do have learning channels and resources, I find they are aimed at novices and they are hard to search for specific queries. I rarely find what I need there. I can quickly google most of the answers I need. I often find great solutions on some random blog. I suspect the big software companies rely on regular users googling their own solutions.

Jeff Arola

Community Expert

The newest ones i can find dated 11/5/2019 for photoshop elements 2020.

Photoshop Elements Editor:

https://helpx.adobe.com/content/dam/help/en/pdf/photoshop-elements_reference.pdf

Photoshop Elements Organizer:

https://helpx.adobe.com/content/dam/help/en/pdf/elements-organizer_reference.pdf

From what i can gather Adobe is just not interested in providing pdf manuals any longer.

It's a shame since the online help is is not user friendly at all, i.e. it's much faster just to google

than try top find the answer in the online help and that applies to all Adobe products, not just photoshop elements.

L

LemonPeelerAuthor

Known Participant

[ It's a shame since the online help is is not user friendly at all, i.e. it's much faster just to google

than try top find the answer in the online help and that applies to all Adobe products, not just photoshop elements. ]

So true! Part of the problem is that the online manuals are NOT searchable. The only search field for an online manual is the general field at the top of the page for the User Guide and it only searches the entire support website. The results are generally useless, even if you include the name of the application in the search. In this day and age, we can't imagine that there isn't a program developers utility that could quickly convert their online manual to a PDF for download. They could have at least provided a search engine that could search the content of a specific application manual. Their cost cuts are costing us!

MichelBParis

Community Expert

The pdf manuals have not been updated since 2018.

Walter_H

Legend

Michel,

FYI, I have PDF copies of the PSE 2020 manuals for the Editor and Organizer. They are both dated 11/5/2019. The Editor manual is 394 pages and the Organizer manual is 182 pages. If anyone wants a copy, I'd be happy to put them on my OneDrive for download.

--Walter in Davie, FL

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