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I used to work for a company that did monthly mailings with changes to
gobs of manuals.
What we did was to send a "transmittal letter" (whatever you want to
call it) with explanations of how to change the pages. It would look
something like:
RE: XXX Manual Updates Dated x/x/xx
Enclosed please find the following updates to the "XXX" manual.
Chapter Remove pages Insert Pages
1 1-3 through 1-16 1-3 through 1-18
2 2-1 through 2-2 2-1 through 2-2
4 All All
We put revision bars on the changes so the customer would know what had
changed. This was unorthodox, but handy for the customer and us writers
as well. We also included the change date in the footer of all
documents. This way, if a customer called with a complaint about the
manual, customer service could immediately identify if they had the
latest updates.
I've seen this done in other manuals. . .when I was a mere secretary, I
used to have to change out pages in law books all the time. It worked
basically the same way.
Good luck!
-----Original Message-----
From: Randall Larson-Maynard
[mailto:randall -dot- larson-maynard -at- IND -dot- ALSTOM -dot- COM]
Sent: Friday, April 09, 1999 3:15 PM
To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
Subject: Change Pages for Manuals
This is new one for me.
How do you handle change pages for customers? Do you send the pages and
hope the
customer knows what to do with them? Is there a general format, or is
there no
general way to handle this?
We currently (RARELY) send a cheesy, plain cover page with the change
pages.
That is going to change as we have new product line coming down the
pipe. Is
there another, more sophisticated, way to do this?
We print technical manuals that include installation, operation,
engineering
drawings, etc. in 3-ring binders.
Randall Larson-Maynard
Technical Writer
Alstom Automation Schilling Robotics
Davis, CA, USA
randall -dot- larson-maynard -at- ind -dot- alstom -dot- com
www.schilling.com
