Oh i found it, thank goodness. I really am dense. Thank you.

thank you for the quick response, I still cant find where that is.
i tried posting an image of what my mediamonkey looks like so you could maybe point it out to me but it won't let me...

This is still the instruction: https://www.mediamonkey.com/support/ind ... ate-tracks

Collections are Media Tree nodes like Music and Classical Music. they have sub-nodes including Files to Edit. You can enable/disable Collections and sub-nodes under File > Manage Collections, so you may have disabled the Collections or the Files to Edit sub-node.

I'm sure there have been plenty of posts of "how to scan for duplicates", but nearly all of them i come across seem to be for outdated version of mediamonkey since they keep referring to things that i don't see in my version. For example:
MediaMonkey can help find and eliminate duplicates via the "Files to Edit" node, which is located in the tree as a sub node of the Collection nodes (ie. Music, Classical Music, etc.).
I don't see a "Collection" node or a "Files to Edit" node. Either these are outdated or im really really stupid.