Does the N900 have to have a connection to use/check email in boxes?

There are a bunch of messages in the inbox that I have responded to, but when checking my inbox without a network connection, it just sits there with the spinner and black screen.

Any help would be appreciated.

You need:
1. WiFi connection OR
2. 3g or EDGE connection

to check your email

OK... to confirm.. If I have already received the message and its in my inbox, then I go somewhere without a connection, I cant read my received emails?

For some reason my gmail is acting flanky with my n900 and nokia messaging any ideas?

I was able to get the N900 this finally sync my contacts and calendar, but I have the same issues you are experiencing as well.

I noticed my original issues with emails because I have an account with 5000 emails and it would lock up when I launched the email app and tried to immediately scroll through them. The email app would crash. So, last night I launched the email app and loaded the account then let it sit over night. In the morning everything worked fine.

Why does the N900 not down load the messages and store them on the device instead of downloading the whole account each time when launched?

For IMAP, that would be an expected behavior. It downloads the header, not the body. In Windows Mobile you can tell it to pre-fetch none, some, or all of the messages but that's not a requirement of the IMAP protocol. Perhaps that would make a good feature request, to add downloading in IMAP for offline reading?

For POP, it should download the message completely, I believe.

For exchange (MfE) and nokia messaging, I have no idea what the correct behavior is

I have had an iPhone and Palm Pre that both can read emails pulled from the same accounts offline.

This is plain madness!

Thanks for the info. Unfortunately, I think this the straw thats breaking camels back.

that is a joke its gotta be said- why cant the nokia cache the mails

i havdent noticed, but that means i cant read emails on the tube

Uh... hm.... well, I think maybe this is actually addressed, Under settings for the account you should be able to select the download size. Can you check? I disabled my connection and all my MfE emails are readable, as are all the nokia messaging ones... I have it set to "partial download" for Nokia Messaging, MFE doesn't give you any option but a full download.

What email services are you using?!?