You can elect to receive only short summary information (referred to as
"headers") for large messages, which may help you achieve what you want.
You can choose what size is deemed to be too "large". This article has
instructions to configure an account to deliver only headers: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HP010412061033.aspx. The
Send/Receive Settings dialog the article leads you to has a checkbox labeled
"Download only headers for items larger than [N] KB" in which you can set N
as desired.