How do I not Sync?

[spokey]

I want to only manually sync my email. I generally don't use the email on my phone but occasionally want to get some.

For example, right now I have a couple reservations (hotel and other) that I want to have the confirmations on my phone rather than say printing it and bringing it with me. I have a couple accounts set up and basically the email works ok.

but

in a prior version of email (original moto droid) I could leave auto syncing off and on the occasion where I wanted the email press the sync item and I was good.

with my S4 mini this doesn't seem to work right. This is using the email not gmail app. I have two comcast accounts set up. If I keep Sync Email off, when I press the little yin-yang circle at the bottom of the email list I get "Email Sync turned off". OK. So I turn on email sync and then set sync schedule, roaming, everything I can find to manual. When I do that, it still retrieves email periodically.

Short of digging deep in to settings when I want to get email to turn on sync is there any easy way to just get email when I want it. That being say once a month or so?

 

[Ollie]

Slide the notification bar down with two fingers and you should see a sync icon. If it is highlighted then sync is turned on. If it isn't highlighted then sync is turned off.

 

[Jonny Kansas]

Slide the notification bar down with two fingers and you should see a sync icon. If it is highlighted then sync is turned on. If it isn't highlighted then sync is turned off.

That's for sync in general though. Isn't there still an option under accounts, then the specific email address you want to adjust? I'd check in there and see if you can select not to sync that account automatically before I'd turn sync off completely. If you turn the toggle off in the notification bar, nothing that you want to sync will do so.

 

[Ollie]

My Sync is normally turned off on my private phone. I don't use very many of the services outside of GMail and GMusic. Things like Calendar, Photos, Picasa, Newstand are already turned off. When I check my email it also syncs my app data and my contacts at the same time. Sync eats battery.

My work phone is auto-syncing though. People get a bit impatient now a days if they have to wait ten minutes for a reply

 

[Jonny Kansas]

I leave sync on for most things. We use Google calendar for a family calendar that's always on us, aside from me putting my own appointments in there and wanted to be notified before I miss them. I like to load up Google Books on my phone on occasion and pick up where I left off on my tablet (not sure when they added that feature, but I know it was fairly recent. Kindla app has had it forever now).

Sync may eat a lot of battery, but I have never had trouble making it through a "usual" day with sync on.

 

[spokey]

I leave sync on for most things. We use Google calendar for a family calendar that's always on us, aside from me putting my own appointments in there and wanted to be notified before I miss them. on.

I think Ollie has what I want. I don't want to auto sync anything (at least that I know of). Yes there are several sync buttons in the mail app but that was my problem. They either auto sync or didn't sync at all. If the email sync is off, it won't sync even when I press the manual sync. When sync is on it periodically syncs even when the sync interval is set to manual.

I'll have to test this out of course but I've moved the notification sync up to the top so I can toggle it. But if leaving it off turns off all auto syncing and having me manually sync whatever I want, that will be fine. It would be nice to be able to turn on auto for say calendar when I wanted and leave mail off but manually doing everything is almost as good.