When you get just the top of an important or entertaining e-mail on your Windows Mobile device, you can manually tell the machine to go back to your server and download the whole thing. Just click the link that says download entire message, and then from the Menu choose "Send/Receive".

Here's the catch, though:

If you're imprecise in your selections, you can select from the Menu option #7 "Do Not Download" instead of #8 "Send/Receive". The consequence of this is not only that you won't get the message at all, much less in its entirety, immediately—it's also the case that your desktop or laptop e-mail program won't download that message from your e-mail server, either.

First: how to recover if this happens. As long as your smartphone is set up to leave messages on the server, or your provider automatically saves all your e-mail forever (like Gmail, for example), you can log into your e-mail using its web mail interface (even from your handheld, if you're really in a pinch). Then, search your entire account to find the message you need and forward it to yourself.

Your device and your computer should then download it since it will be a new message in your inbox (but, in some cases, messages you send yourself behave differently than outside messages, so if it still won't download you may have to send it to another e-mail account and then to the one you want—imperfect but a salvage measure).

To prevent this from happening in the first place, though, one option is to use the numbers, rather than the pointing device or touch screen, in the menu (8 for send/receive) to ensure you don’t accidentally click while the "do not download" option is selected. Or, you can request the full message and then just wait until your next automatic download. If you have them set frequently, this may be quick enough.

We discovered this issue, and these work-arounds, on a Moto Q running Windows Mobile 6 standard.