Editing audio file will not play in Premiere Elements 2022

I have a project for Premiere Elements 2022 that i created recently. I wanted to export the entire audio track, do some EQing and mastering in Cubase and then re-import the audio file into Premiere Elements to replace the existing track. I am doing it this way because Elements is pretty limited with audio editing and I already know cubase.

these are the steps i followed:

- from elements, File/Export and Share, selected WAV format, Medium quality. I did try MP3 too but my preference is WAV so avoid compression

- Imported the track into Cubase, did my audio editing there and exported the results to another WAV file.

- Imported the editing audio track back into Elements and drag/drop it on one of the audio tracks.

- the result is that Elements will not play that audio track, meaning no sound comes out and there is not even a waveform displayed on that audio track like the others. 

- I can play the Cubase exported WAV file in other software 

- I can import a completely different MP3 file created by Cubase into Elements and it plays as expected and does show a waveform.

see the attached screenshot so you know what it looks like.

any ideas?