New member with iPhone 4 email questions

[Lgreene]

Hi all-just joined the forum and hoping you guys can help me out. Just got an iphone4s, my very first smartphone. I'm pretty tech-savvy but I'm confused by the way email accounts work on the iPhone and about working with email between my laptop and my iPhone. Have lots of questions, including how to keep my gmail account from downloading all my emails into my phone including those I already deleted from my computer, how to delete multiple emails at once etc. Hope to hear from you soon!