I did read the manual for our Panasonic, but only because to turn off (or on, I can't remember, so it wasn't that important) some feature, and rather then digging through the myriad of menus, the manual does give to the numerical shortcut - something like ##304, to jump you to the setting. But other then that, plug it in a and make calls. Sure, it can do a bazllion other things, but I don't care for them. Now get off my lawn!