When roaming, need to filter out attachments to avoid data charges

[smartyfants]

Hi -

Any ideas on how to limit my roaming data charges when checking mail on my iPhone by stripping attachments, or not downloading them to the phone? It is a gmail account, and there seems to not be a good way to do this.

thanks.

[patrickvanzandt]

Originally Posted by smartyfants

Hi -

Any ideas on how to limit my roaming data charges when checking mail on my iPhone by stripping attachments, or not downloading them to the phone? It is a gmail account, and there seems to not be a good way to do this.

thanks.

If you don't mind not seeing the messages with attachments at all (at least not on your iPhone), try this:

1. In GMail in your computer, create a new label "hasAttachment"
2. In GMail on your computer, create a filter to redirect all messages that have attachments to this label and to skip the Inbox.
   
3. (If you are using IMAP from the iPhone) In GMail on your computer, modify the IMAP settings so that hasAttachment is not available via IMAP.
4. All messages with attachments are no longer seen on the iPhone
5. However, on your computer you must manually check the hasAttachment folder. This might be more hassle than it is worth. One workaround might be the "multiple inboxes" GMail lab feature.

[smartyfants]

...for the advice. We fixed it by switching the account to IMAP, which does not DL attachements unless you ask it to. Cheers~