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Can anyone recommend a good resource for creating guides and reports

by TrueStory
8 replies
Hey guys, I am *certain* this has been discussed and asked again, but my search was fruitless, so if i missed this topic somewhere, please point me there

Can anyone recommend (preferably in the range of FREE - $10/mo) software/service for creating pretty manuals, free guides, free reports, etc.

I don't have inDesign. Doing this in Word is impossible (for example, cannot pick backgrounds, etc.)

I tried manuala.com = it's not really that great and too expensive for creating 2-5 page give-away freebie report.

I tried canvas, but it's kind of complicated, unless I am making 2 page report.

Roughly, I got about 6-10 pages I need to "prettify" and PDFfy. Hiring someone on fiverr or freelance sites, costs me more than I want to pay.

Gracias. in advance
#creating #good #guides #recommend #reports #resource
  • Profile picture of the author Blossom Stein
    What kind of manuals, TrueStory?

    Canvass is an entire LMS... you're writing a short report, not building an entire online university, right?
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    • Profile picture of the author TrueStory
      Hey, i am writing Free Guide/Report. Not an infographics. Like, "10 Steps to detox your system" kind of stuff.
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    • Profile picture of the author TrueStory
      on somewhat unrelated logic,
      As far as "cheap *******" goes, it's all cool and dandy, but there is cost to time spent learning.

      Here is my logic:

      I do not know how to use inDesign, but if "free open source alternative" is anything like Gimp to Photoshop, i will spend entire week learning that free alternative. This is too much time spent for something simple, and would actually justify paying someone else to do it

      Good portion of people in this business (IM) are oriented on "cheap", "free", "inexpensive" but the true cost of something is time invested into a project.
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  • Profile picture of the author Blossom Stein
    Follow-up: I'm a cheap bast@rd, so I do everything I can through open source or free alternatives to commercial packages, and I do pretty well. One of my go-to moves is to search for "[name of commercial software] free alternative". That usually gets me by. But then there are times like this when I stumble across a massive news event like that of 2013 when Adobe was thought to be giving away Creative Suite 2 (including inDesign), an old suite to be sure, but free and useful none the less. It turned out not to be entirely accurate, however I am at this moment downloading a 3.3G file that claims to be Creative Suite 3. I'm going to make a virtual machine and open it up in there. If it turns out to be legit, I'll update here.
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  • Profile picture of the author go4wardnow
    Have you considered using OPEN OFFICE for your reports? Its free and
    you can convert directly to a PDF when finished. You can import screen shots
    etc. for your reports.
    Consider getting your graphics done on Fiverr. You can get
    both a 2 dimensional and a 3-D Ecover very reasonably.

    Have fun and keep moving forward.
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    • Profile picture of the author TrueStory
      I think you guys misunderstood me.....

      I have Microsoft Word, but it's designed for documents, not for brochures or user guides. Manipulating images in MS Word (or Open Office for that matter) is tricky. It's doable but not as easy. You cannot set background images for entire page, you can't have pages of different size, you can't really have complex layout.

      However, I ended up using Canva.com they actually do have brochure template. It's still not exactly what I wanted but, it worked. What bugs me about Canva is their pricing model. I mean, it's great that they ask you to pay for what you use, but it'd be a lot cooler if they just charged monthly and gave so many credits or access to set qty of images. But it is what it is.

      I was really looking for constructor similar to LeadPages but for PDF creations. I guess Canva is as close as it comes

      I was hoping someone could recommend something from top of the head that they personally use, not guess-stab at the problem with logical suggestions.

      go4wardnow - Fiverr is great! I use it all the time!


      A point on free stuff, nothing is free, really. It's either going to be free (community/open source) soft that takes hours to learn (not as intuitive) or it'll be SaaS for monthly price (my preference). Even Adobe started doing Software as Service, because they probably *finally* realized that a software cannot cost as much as a decent used car (in some countries).

      Yeah.

      Thanks for help. I am still open for suggestions.
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  • Profile picture of the author anshdeb
    I am not sure if you tried "Scribus" for this? https://www.scribus.net/
    I think considering your requirements and constraints, it would be a good choice to go for.

    It might not offer you a lot of freedom and creativity but, it should pretty much work.

    Hope this helped.
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    • Profile picture of the author TrueStory
      That looks promising, thank you! i'll check it out.
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