iPad Copying Useless Emails

[jchunter]

I setup the email app on my new iPad 2 and, unfortunately, linked it to my old gmail account, which has thousands of ancient emails. Now, the iPad (or iTunes sync) is trying to copy every *#@ing one of them into the ipad's limited storage. I have to stop this annoying automatic transfer and replace it with a simpler, manually? controlled, file transfer.

So, I am thinking of changing the iPad's email to a new account that would be used only as a gateway for moving useful files between iPad and Desktop storage.

Is this a good plan? Can I just uninstall the email app or are there ties to the iStore that will also have to be fixed? Or is there a better way to solve this problem?

 

[twerppoet]

Don't use iTunes. Turn off whatever mail, contact, calendar syncing you have in iTunes.

Instead set up your GMail account using this method on the iPad.

Setting up Google Sync with your iOS device : Mail, Calendar, & Contacts - Google Mobile Help

Even if you have a huge amount if email in a folder, it will not all download to the iPad, only the number of emails you have set up in your preferences under Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars. The rest of the email in the folder can be accessed by using the search function.

 

[jchunter]

Thanks for that link. Better than turning off iTunes, I did a PC system restore to a date prior to installing that stuff, including MobileMe, etc. My PC experienced a LOT of crashes after those programs began uploading mass quantities of useless (unwanted) crip crap to the iPad. I began to think I had a hardware problem but now the PC is running solid again.

IMHO, iTunes was not originally designed to manage a distributed database on dissimilar computers and its recent extensions have not had enough user testing on PCs.

Setting up Google Sync on iPad:
Specifically, when I tried to setup GoogleSync on the iPad, I did not see any way to limit the percent of the PC's Inbox to Push to the iPad. The Inbox seems to be all or nothing... So, I have a feeling that the entire 9000 emails are going to end up in the iPad......

So, how can I limit the number of emails pushed to the iPad?

Edit:
Ah Ha! I discovered the answer deep inside the Mail, Contacts, Calendars menu. Looks as if Push has been set to "Manually", which is great as long as it limits the Inbox transfers to the default 3 days. Great!

 

[twerppoet]

The days limit in the account settings is one way. In Settings > Mail, Calendars, Contacts, under the Mail section you can limit how many recent messages are shown. If you have more messages in a folder than this limit, you actually have to hit Load More Messages... before they will be downloaded from the server (scroll all the way to the bottom of the mail list, and a bit more to make this options show up).

Also, when you use search is searches all mail on the sever, not just what is showing on the iPad; so that is another way to get at older mail without having to keep it all not he iPad.

At least that's how it works with Exchange and IMAP accounts. I'm not certain about POP3 accounts.

If you go down the the Calendar section on the same Settings page you can control how far back the Calendar app syncs events as well.