I purchased your Email Field Guide a few days ago and am breathing huge sighs of relief on every other page. After all these frustrating years of knowing I have a problem but not knowing what to do, help has finally arrived! I want to assist a client whose unread emails now number over 20,000 (!) but first I have to implement effective strategies with my own mess! THANK YOU (yes I’m shouting!) for taking the time to craft such a comprehensive guide for all of us apprentice samurai email warriors.

This eBook is like other David Sparks, aka MacSparky, books. Just about perfect in every regard. I have purchased 2 other MacSparky eBooks and they are all equally outstanding. I have used email for over 20 years. I learned so much that I just wasn't aware of. Just buy this, and his other eBooks, you'll be glad you did.

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I really enjoyed reading this book. It lays out very concise and practical methods for dealing with being inundated by e-mail. Looking forward to implementing these practices in my virtual mailbox. Now, if only I could find a way to get the USPS to recycle the unwanted, sales circulars they are always stuffing in my actual mailbox...

This book is fun to read and artfully crafted but, more than that, it is gives you a multitude of ways to control email in your personal/ business life which makes it useful as well. I hope it continues to be updated through another couple of Mac and iOS updates. Making it valuable in the future. For now, it is essential reading.

Signed,

A Budding Mac Power User (a.k.a. Geek ;~)

Best book ever written on Email.

So helpful. So simple. So thankful I read this book.

This is another great book by David Sparks. It shows you how to control your email and keep them under control.

Check out David's other great books and his weekly podcast, Mac Power Users.

Thanks, David

As a listener of the Mac Power Users podcast, I agonized over which of David's books to get first. In the end I chose this one first due to the headaches and frustration of years of ineffectively managing both my work and personal email accounts. This book has really helped get my personal accounts cleaned up, but I have also applied many of David's ideas to my work account as well. Now the only decision is which of his books to get next.

Like the other books that David Sparks has written, this book is dramatically under-priced. I highly recommend that you purchase and read it carefully (more than once). If you do, then like me you’ll feel guilty for gaining so much insight for so little cost.

David always does a wonderful job with his Field Guides, and Email is no exception.

I’ve already applied several ideas from this book (including reducing the number of email folders I use) and it’s helped me be more efficient. If what you are looking for is a practical guide on how to get the most out of email without it taking over your life, this is your book.

Thank you to David for the great, consistent work that you put out and for all you do to support the Mac community.

Thanks David Sparks for this informal book about e-mail. Here you’ll find a lot of information about e-mail in general, including protocols, best (and worst) practices, e-mail clients and the best of them all: a e-mail workflow chapter with audio! There is also a lot of good link references and screencasts. Kudos!

After reading many positive reviews, I gained the strength to face the task of tackling my inbox consisting of 2327 emails head-on. I have just completed the field guide. It felt as if the author saw me in his crystal ball when writing this. The writing style, format and screencasts were perfect teaching tools for a novice such as myself. One of the best aspects for me was an introduction to plug-ins/apps that help manage workflow as well as how to use apple rules. This book has been a great start in my journey to de-clutter my life. Recommend highly.

An extremely helpful book in the MacSparky Field Guide series. David’s unique voice comes through well, leading experienced emailers and newbies alike on a surprisingly interesting journey. The book has something for everybody, and includes not just technical suggestions, but guides about how to rethink and reorganize how you write and organize your emails. David makes the trip fun, but does not talk down to his readers. It’s like having your own personal email guru. I recommend this book highly, as I do the other MacSparky Field Guides. I can’t wait to see what David does next.

David’s the best, have long enjoyed his eBooks (beginning with Paperless), Mac Power Users podcasts, and MacSparky blog posts. I’ve been having lots of problems integrating Mail and Gmail accounts, so eagerly bought his new Email eBook. Very satisfied! Answered tons more questions than I even expected—and kept me entertained throughout (as well as sleepless—couldn’t put it down!). Thanks, David!

It’s an audio/video and screencast crash course in taming email, and mastering the tools to use it effectively.

I have purchased and read all of MacSparky's books except Mark down which I don't use. As a long time fairly sophisticated email user I was a bit skeptical I would get much out of this but was very pleasantly surprised. I usually assess the usefulness of books by the number of book marks I create and this book ended up with 37. I definitely learned things here that I have already begun to apply in my daily battle with email. Well done!

As with another reviewer, my glossary is completely messed up (entries only under "Y," written in what appears to be Latin), and my screen cast 4.19 and 4.20 are the same screencast, even thought the initial pics and titles appear to be correct.

The iBook starts out very slow, describing how to set up your email account, the different types of email, etc.; however, after the first couple chapters it becomes very good with great productivity tips.

I have two iPads (both with a retina display - 3rd and 5th generation), and neither one displays the Glossary properly. Both show only one entry for the letter Y, and it's in a foreign language. There are no other letters or entries in the Glossary.

I have repeatedly re-downloaded the book from iTunes, but no difference. The rest of the book works properly, and is very well done.

Any suggestions David? 5+ Stars otherwise.

I have been an email user for 20 years. So why might I have the slightest interest in this book? Practically speaking, I need to ditch Entourage because it is going to die soon; it relies on API’s that are soon to be abandoned by Apple. So David’s book is timely, as I have been thinking about email, my habits, and the difficulties I envision in changing email clients. This book has helped me totally rethink and ditch email habits that may have made sense in the past, but which are no longer relevant or useful. As a result, rather than dreading the move, I am now looking forward to switching over to Apple’s Mail and simplifying my life at the same time: A real bargain for ten bucks.

Even if you don’t use Apple technology, there is a lot here that will help you deal with the email firehose. The philosophy behind why you make certain choices in dealing with email are certainly platform agnostic. I am forced to use Outlook and Exchange for Windows at work, but implementing many of these same strategies has made my work so much more productive. Thanks David!

What an outstanding book, full of truly practical, useful content. I’m a fast reader, but this book is taking me FOREVER to get through, not only because I refuse to skip a single of the fantastic screencasts, but because about every third page I have to stop reading, go into my Mac or one of my “iThingies” and make changes to settings or set up email rules. There’s not a wasted word in this book, and there are nuggets of humor in there for those paying attention (“pork chops & applesauce” . . . I literally laughed out loud). I only wish he had written this book sooner; no telling how much time I could’ve saved in dealing with the masses of email I get. Another home run for Mr. Sparks.

Love the book, worth the price just for the interviews!

Keep up the good work.

I have all four of David Sparks' iBooks, including Email. And, they are all valuable tutorials (he calls them Field Guides for a reason). In Email, there is something here for anyone that uses email, whether that be overviews of Apple Mail, Gmail, security, workflows, etc. Sad to say, with the never-ending influx of email, we can all certainly use up-to-date strategies for dealing with it. Now, if I could only use Markdown for these Apple reviews....

I have seen mailboxes with 20.000 or even 50.000 emails. And mail folders with a woopping +50GB of data.

There is a great need for this book.

Thank you David!

Even if you consider yourself an email guru, you will learn countless essential tips and tricks to manage your email better - and help those around you. These strategies can also be applied to other areas of your life. As a physician, I receive numerous emails daily from patients and my digital inbox of test results explodes worse than a tedious game of whack-a-mole. And while I pride myself on being an efficiency ninja already, I've now learned even more to teach my colleagues, kids etc. Thanks David for a truly life changing book. Simply put, this is a MUST BUY ( and I've never written a review ever)!

This book cannot fix your email problem…only you can do that. What this book does is provide a tremendous amount of information to help you troubleshoot and stimulate you to review your email systems. I highly recommend this book and Mr. Sparks' other field guides for that matter. They are all exceptionally well done!

Even if you’re a pro when it comes to email, you’ll pick up some useful tips and tricks in Mr. Spark’s latest book. With great illustrations by Mike Rohde, it uses the iBook format to make what can be a rather dull topic into an enjoyable page turner. The video examples and interviews are exceptional as well, and they complement the text that surrounds them. A *great* iBook!

Another great book from Mr. Sparks. It is not at all what I expected, as this is not just a technical book about email, but a soup-to-nuts evaluation of how we all communicate and get through our day using technology. Mr. Sparks has obviously been musing over maximizing efficiency, and offers his well thought-out reflections on email as both a great tool and a business distraction. He offers a host of solutions to set up and use email to realize its full poteniial. On top of providing great content in an easily accessible writing style, Mr. Sparks takes full advantage of what e-books have to offer over print. This e-book has a lot of extras, including some great interviews and "how-to" screen casts. Even if you are only a closet geek, this is a must read if you want to get more out of your day.

Another fantastic book from Dave that will help get back on top of all the email in your life. This book is a comprehensive guide to the various technical and tactical ways you can manage your email on a Mac.

It covers tactical concepts — how to sort your inbox, archiving, trashing and so forth. I found this very well done — some of this is going to be familiar if you’ve read much about Inbox Zero, but it is well presented here in a quick and easy to follow way. I’d read about, but never really implemented Inbox Zero, but feel I now have the tools and info how to do it easily enough that I actually will.

There is a ton of info on the various software products that either directly handle email or provide useful tools. I found a new email product that I will try out and may switch to, just getting that tip may be worth it for me.

The last two sections are fantastic. You get a detailed overview of how Dave manages his email, which is a good, complex and high volume workflow. I like it shows how to deal with something beyond just a simple single email address.

Finally, there are interviews with some other Mac email aficionados on their workflows. I enjoyed these and really appreciate hearing the variety of approaches.

In the end, I feel like I have a few key concepts that I will implement and a couple of new products and services and in combination I will be in much better shape. Very worth the ten bucks!

p.s. If you buy this through the Mac version of the iBookstore you may get some warning about certain features not working on the Mac because they were designed for the iPad. Don’t believe it — this was remarkable on my 27” iMac — everything worked perfectly and it was glorious in full screen mode.