CC acting like apps are not installed, and therefore not updating them

I had Photoshop 26, Premiere 26, and InDesign 26 all installed and running fine on my MacBook Pro (not sure of the exact build numbers, but they should have been the most recent.) Yet, for some reason the Creative Cloud app was acting as if they were not installed. They were not included in “Installed on this machine” under and they would not auto-update or even give me the option to update manually.

I waited weeks hoping it would resolve itself, and then finally just caved and installed the latest versions manually. To do this I had to click “Install” down under “Featured apps in your plan” instead of the usual “Update” towards the top.

But now, all my presets, preferences, plugins, actions, workspaces, shortcuts, etc. from my previous versions are COMPLETELY gone. And there's only one settings folder and one application folder for the “26” version of each app, so it’s not like I can even access the previous files to migrate manually.

And yes, I’ve always had “Import previous settings and preferences” checked, but CC treated these as new installs instead of updates for some reason.

This is absolutely DEVASTATING to my daily workflow, and to start over would be a massive setback. So PLEASE someone tell me there’s something I can do. Thank you.