Thanks for all the replies! I'm still having problems!
btw the Windows Live Mail I was talking about was the email program with Windows 7.
Here's a summary -
This Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 is a new phone to me. I was using a Blackberry (it broke) without a problem and I could access emails both on the phone and the PC.
I have talktalk email and google email. I have followed instructions to set them up and they both have imap as the incoming server.
With talktalk, the problem seems to be as mentioned above - the emails are either on my phone or the PC but not both which is very annoying.
With google email, sometimes the emails arrive in the account I set up and other times they come to the GMail application!
I really need to sort both accounts but I'm a bit of a novice so any help would be greatly received!
Thanks!