: What program do I use to create a manual or catalog? The last time I did any desktop publishing it was ten years ago and I used Microsoft Publisher. Now I need to put together a product

@Martha945

Free alternative, you can make own catalog with fastcataloguer.com

On website, you making data entry or product data at zip file to upload.

Catalog is ready, you can download. Simple website.

print catalog

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@Si6392903

It sounds like what you are writing is technical documentation, since you mention a user manual.

InDesign's strength is layouts. For technical writing, you generally need better capabilities with your content than just appearance. You might need different formats, the ability to extract data from it, the ability to re-use content, etc.

There are a lot of dedicated tools for technical writing. A few popular ones that support print output


DITA
DocBook
FrameMaker
LaTeX


The right tool will depend on a lot of factors:


Are you a programmer or a designer? A programmer is going to be more at home with tools like DITA and DocBook
Are you writing the content or is it being provided to you?
Are you working with other people on this project?
What's in your content? Are there a lot of images? Technical figures?
Who is the audience and what do they expect?
Do you need an index?
What do you already know how to use?

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@Michele215

The questions are:


Is the catalog going to be printed in a comercial print, like sheeted offset?


Then you can use the free program Scribus. www.scribus.net/

If it is going to be printed in the company's lasser printer then you can do that inclusive in Word or Open Office. Of course depends on the design style you need.
What is the complexity of it?


You can do quite nice things on Scribus, but there is a chance you need some strange feature like Ilustrations from another department, so you can be limited in some way. If and only that is the case you probably could need the mentioned InDesign. But I doubt that.


What is your expertise?


I use quite a lot Corel Draw. You can use Ilustrator too, and let us not forget Quark Xpress. Another very simple and not expensive is Serif Page Plus. It has a free version.

If you still have Publisher and that meets your requirements, use it.

Aditional requirements: Think for a moment on all the workflow, like revisions, source material, file formats, etc.

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@Vandalay110

Adobe InDesign - For Magazines, Publications, Books & Other Multi-Paged Items.
helpx.adobe.com/indesign/how-to/what-is-indesign.html
From wikipedia:

Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing software application produced by Adobe Systems. It can be used to create works such as posters, flyers, brochures, magazines, newspapers, and books. InDesign can also publish content suitable for tablet devices in conjunction with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite. Graphic designers and production artists are the principal users, creating and laying out periodical publications, posters, and print media. It also supports export to EPUB and SWF formats to create e-books and digital publications, including digital magazines, and content suitable for consumption on tablet computers. In addition, InDesign supports XML, style sheets, and other coding markup, making it suitable for exporting tagged text content for use in other digital and online formats. The Adobe InCopy word processor uses the same formatting engine as InDesign.

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