It's nice that GOG now have the manuals for the two games but not so nice that the only way to get them is to redownload the whole games.

Downloaded all three games in the bundle (the next day from your post). Manuals were included with all three games. You should find them in the root directory of the game folder ( Anno 1503 AD \ Manual.pdf , for instance ). They are .PDF files, and all are called 'Manual.pdf'. Use 'Windows Explorer' to find the folder, click on the folder to get a list of the files in the root directory, then double-click the Manual.pdf file. Adobe Acrobat will load and display the manual for you. (You do have Adobe Acrobat on your system, yes?)

Thanks for trying to help.

I have no doubt that the manuals are there in current versions of the three installers. I have setup_anno_1503_2.0.0.4.exe and setup_anno_1701_2.0.0.3 and they did not install any pdf manuals. To get them I'll have to download the new installers. I'd happily do so if the changelog mentioned anything else then adding the manuals.

I'll wait until there is a real update to redownload gigabytes. I do not understand why we can't download the manual separately as well like every other games on GOG that has manuals.

I'm pretty sure they just forgot them as goodies on Friday and will add them tomorrow. Here are all manuals I could find:
http://www.gog.com/forum/anno_series/where_to_find_manuals/post2

Very strange. Your setups are one point number less than mine, and I downloaded the next day after you. Maybe GOG fixed the problem overnight - stranger 'things' have happened. BTW ANNO 1602 AD does have a separate download for the manual, and most of the games I have gotten from GOG do also (I wound up with a lot of duplicate manuals before I figured things out).

I can't blame you for not wanting to do another download, especially of 1701 (3 GB). It took me an hour to download that one, and I have a pretty speedy DSL connection (6 Mb down). I found out earlier why downloading took so long on GOG (because I asked them). There is a BIG difference between 6 Mb and 6 MB - little 'b' is 'bits', Big 'B' is 'bytes'.

The Manuals are nice to have to explain the game layout and keyboard commands, but aren't all that necessary as the in-game tutorials and 'Help' are quite good. Use ShadowOwl's links to get your manuals (and save a lot of time).

Hmm, still no update.