I have an 8700c, and I have 4 email accounts that I have set up for my BB to check. Sometimes, for example when I'm sitting at my desk with my email client open on my computer, I have no need for my BB to be checking my work email account. Is there any way to temporarily halt the BB checking a specific account until I tell it to start checking again?

In the same way, I was on vacation over the weekend, and I wanted a breather. I wanted to tell my BB to not check my emails until I told it to start checking again, but I couldn't figure out how to do this without outright deleting the email account on the BB.

Any help here?

There's no way to temporarily pause email delivery. If you're using BIS then as a workaround you could temporarily delete the service books for a specific email account and then use the "E-mail Settings" icon from the Home Screen to log into the BIS and resend the service books.

In BIS 1.8 if one goes to filters, then on top right next
Default when no filters apply: Forward messages to handheld I click on the default and then change it to not forward and when ready i go back in and set it again to forward. It worked perfectly while I was traveling and I did not want to get charged for roaming data over a period of a whole month.

Awesome! I've been wondering wher these "filters" are that I keep seeing references to on my BB. I finally logged into the BlackberryStart site today and found the wonderful filters there. I've set my default to not forward messages on the email account that's always up on my computer while I'm at the office. No need to get duplicate office email.

Then, I've been struggling with my Gmail account because, due to the way Gmail displays mail or something, every time I SEND an email , my BB has been downloading a copy of the sent email, in addition to any received emails. Very annoying. I was able to set a filter on my Gmail account so that if my email address is the From: address, it won't forward to my BB.

Yea! One by one, I'm solving all the little quirks of my new BB.

This should help with your Gmail question.

Excellent suggestion: Use your BIS filters feature. This is a little more involved, but this works perfectly for international travellers who want to save data charges. You can always manually login to your BIS account on your laptop to check your BlackBerry emails via your laptop instead, after all!

I personally use this feature to vibrate my emails ONLY on the important emails from certain email addresses -- all my other emails reach my BlackBerry silently. The BIS filters feature, can of course, be used to force the email NOT to be transmitted to BlackBerry (and stay on the web server)