Weird issue in magento 2 products not showing unless I duplicate them

So this is a really weird issue I’m having with 2.4.5
When I create a configurable product I do all the usual work of inputting the data and then change the visibility to hidden until our stock has arrived.
When the stock has arrived, all I normally need to do is change the visibility and everything is fine.

Lately though, no matter what I do they just won’t appear on the site, although I can go direct to the product via the URL it’s not showing any of the options (size, colour).

The only way I’ve been able to get around it is that if I just duplicate the configurable (and then change the status to enabled) and then everything is working as it should.
It is a pain doing it that way (until I can figure out the issue) as I have to delete my original configurable and then change the SKU and url key to match the original.

I’ve done exports to compare between the original and duplicate to see if there is any data difference but nothing.