So I'm still trying to figure this out. I thought the easiest thing to do would be to simply delete the posts in categories and then delete the category and start over fresh. But after deleting the posts, when I go to delete the category I get this message:

The following relations prevent deletion:
3 posts within category through extra cat

I assumed that this meant I had used the category within other posts in the blog as a secondary. But after a week of searching I came up with nothing.

Can anyone let me know if I'm on the right track or what else I could try? Thanks. :)

What happens when you try to sort your posts by that particular category? Just curious ... gathering information will eventually help eh?

Go to your phpmyadmin via your host and browse your evo_items__item table and orderby post_main_cat_ID just to see if it is in there. Might be a phantom post laying about?

Also use phpmyadmin to look at evo_postcats and orderby postcat_cat_ID to see the IDs of posts associated with each category ... and then you'll see which posts think they have the problem category as a subcat.

Eventually the idea is to figure out which posts are associated with the category you can't wipe out.

Thank you for your help EdB.

None of the missing posts were listed in items_item under their category ID.

I was able to find the problem by using your second suggestion. I sorted the postcat_cat_ID list and found the three missing posts. With their Post ID's I was then able to go to items_item to find them. One of them was still not listed there, the other two were. Their category ID should have been 74, but somehow they were listed as 574 and 674. I don't know how the 5 and 6 got in the mix but removing them sorted out the error message.

Still don't know why it happened in the first place but hopefully this information will be of help to anyone else running into this problem.

Thanks again EdB B)