I just recently tryed to to export a song and my encoder was missing said i needed to purchase a new one or upgrade. Would any one know what i should do about this issue?" Thanks in advance.

  By a license from CW, it is a one-time fee transferable to all future CW products, or use one of the many free external encoders.

The one that comes with Sonar is a 30-day trial. If you purchased a license for a previous version, you just need to enter your code otherwise, as scook said, you have to purchase one (I think its $20) or get the free LAME encoder. You can search the forum for instructions on how to set it up. 

Yeah, that is only reason I have kept my PA9 CD although I don't know why. I never have used the export to MP3 option.

The documentation supplied with SONAR also covers adding an external encoder.

Rather than encode directly to MP3, I prefer to create a WAV file so I can audition the mix before smashing it to an MP3.

edit: getting used to embedding HTML tags manually (thanks to toxic mix of CW forum SW and Firefox)