Is there a setting so when you open EM Client it does not sync until I hit the refresh button . I travel a lot and I want to have it open before I connect to internet as when at sea it is per minute of usage as it does not open fast
You can manually toggle the offline mode when you don’t want to connect using Menu > File > Work Offline.
A more practical solution is to setup your email account as POP3, then disable syncing in Settings.
With both of those settings unticked, eM Client will not connect to the mail server to fetch new messages unless you click Refresh.
For sending you can also disable that in settings.
The same applies here, it will not send your outgoing messages until you click Refresh.