I just upgraded to a smart phone and have been using my gmail account to
view emails on it. Most of the time if I view a new email on my phone
and then later open outlook, they won't get downloaded or show up in
outlook at all.
So far, you've described default behavior if you've set up your email
account using POP3. By default, emails are deleted from the server
after they've been retrieved. Sounds like you want to change that,
which is easy enough.
Is there a setting that only downloads new and unread
emails in outlook? I can't figure it out and I really need to be able to
have outlook download everything on the gmail server and not just new
emails.
Since you're apparently accessing your emails first from the smart
phone, and then later at home with Outlook, start with the smart
phone. Look for a setting similar to "Leave a copy on the server"
buried somewhere in the email server or account settings. That way,
you can see your new emails during the day on your smart phone, but
they'll still be available to Outlook when you get home.
In case the reverse is also true, where you want email to be available
on the smart phone even after you've seen it in Outlook, then do the
same thing in Outlook; i.e., check the box to 'Leave a copy on the
server' in Outlook. Outlook has additional settings for eventually
deleting email from the server after a configurable number of days to
help keep things cleaned up.
In Outlook 2003, you'd go to Tools, Email Accounts, view existing
email accounts, select the relevant account, then hit Change. Click
More Settings, then select the Advanced tab. You'll see the setting
toward the bottom of that tab. Other versions of Outlook may or may
not be similar in where the setting is located. It'll be around
somewhere.