[Andreas]

Originally Posted by JohnBee

The permission system doesnt propagate down the forum permissions, ex: if you set do not exclude forums at the top of a forum section, all forums will receive "do not exclude" even if you change individual forums under that section to "allow exclude"

The permission is Can exclude Forums from "Get New Posts".
If you set this to No for a Category, but Yes for subforums of this category, the category will not show up in the listbox - that's correct and actaully working as designed.
vBulletin search behaves the same way - set "Can search Forum" for a category to No, but Yes for subforums - it will not be shown on the search form.
Or set "Can View"=No for a category but Yes for subforums - the category will not be shown on Forumhome, etc.