If you use Gmail with your BlackBerry, this post might help you out a bit. One gripe with the service is that it provides only a one-way sync. This means that you can read messages on your BlackBerry and they’ll be marked as read in Gmail, but if you read it in Gmail it still sits on your BlackBerry as a new message. In December we talked about marking prior messages as open. This way you can let your Gmail messages build up and knock them out with one swoop. In playing around with my options the other day, I’ve found one that makes this process a bit quicker. 
What you do is go to your Messages application, then click in the Menu button and go to Options. Then click on General Options. Scroll all the way down until you see a heading for Actions. The second to last option there is Confirm Mark Prior Opened. That’s by default set to Yes. Switch it over to No. Save, and you’re set. I point this out not because it will double your productivity (in the mind of Homer Simpson), but because it’s just less of a pain. Menu, Mark Prior Opened, done. No prompts, no nothing. I suppose it makes Gmail’s one-way sync slightly less annoying.
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Too bad, this doesn’t appear to work in all versions. This option doesn’t exist on my 8830WE running 4.2.2
Joe, I completely agree the annoyance that Gmail doesn’t have 2-way sync for email… While Yahoo mail does have flawless 2-way sync.
Anyway, this post is precisely how I’ve come to use my BlackBerry and Gmail, with one twist… Here’s what I do:
Several times a day I read through each message. If I determine I want to read a particular message later in Gmail (while still within the message) I click the Menu button and choose Mark as Unopened… and then press the N key (or 6 on SureType) to move directly into the next message.
After reviewing all the messages I head back to the Inbox. Typically there are a few left unread (on purpose). I then apply a filter to show only “All Unread Messages”, head to the top date header and delete these from “Handheld Only”, which will also leave them as Unread within Gmail.
Then I highlight the remaining Read emails and delete from “Mailbox and Handheld”.
Thus, this clears my Gmail Inbox of unwanted messages and leaves those I want to check later as Unread.
Hope that makes sense and maybe helps another user…
I have yahoo linked with my blackberry and I can’t get rid of the icon. Will this same procedure work on that?