Would suggesting alternative email clients be helpful?
@yetiinabox Thanks. I should have followed up to say that I found the solution: let the Google app to access my local files. Not happy with that, but can live with it.
Meanwhile, I had tried old fave Thunderbird, which has some advantages, but getting it to load 15 years of email archives in 1,000 msg batches was maddening. After several hours of pokes, it was only half done, so I deleted it.
I have never had any email client as good as the #MSDOS #PegasusMail that ran my life in the 1990s.