Stop Gmail From Downloading Too Many Messages to Your E-Mail Client

This is one of the wrinkles associated with using Gmail's otherwise awesome IMAP feature, which effectively turns your mail client into an extension of the mail server. (You can learn more about this in my old post, Use Gmail IMAP with Your Desktop E-Mail Client.) Unfortunately, Live Mail lacks any kind of setting for limiting the number of messages it downloads; with IMAP, it's all or nothing.

Fortunately, Gmail itself offers a way to close the spigot, so to speak. All it takes is a quick trip to the control panel:

1. Open your browser and connect to your Gmail account.

2. Click the little gear icon in the top-right corner, then click Mail settings.

3. Click the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab, the scroll down to Folder Size Limits.

4. Enable this setting: Limit IMAP folders to contain no more than this many messages.

5. Choose a number of messages: 1,000, 2,000, 5,000, or 10,000. (My advice: start with 2,000 and see if that's not enough. You can always increase it later.)