Want to display all but 1 category in channel entries loop

Question

I would like to display all but 1 category in my channel entries loop. I tried doing category="not .." but it doesn't work. Here is my code

{exp:channel:entries channel="lm_edit" sort="desc" category="not 42" limit="5" disable="member_data|trackbacks|playa|pagination" status="open|LMonly" dynamic="no"}
    {if count == "1"}   
    
    {if lm_main_image != ""}
    {exp:ce_img:single src="{lm_main_image}" border="1|b9b3be" width="150" height="75" crop="yes" align="left" class="img-responsive" id="tabimg"}
    {/if}
    {title}
    
    {if lm_deck == ""}{/if}
    {if lm_deck != ""}{exp:eehive_hacksaw chars = "100" append="..."}{lm_deck}{/exp:eehive_hacksaw}{/if}
    
    {if:else}
    
    {title}
    
    {/if}
    {if count == "5"}More News{/if}
   {/exp:channel:entries}

When I get rid of 'not' and just have category="42", all entries from 42 display. When I add back the not nothing is filtered out and all entries display.

Answer 1

I had the same issue once and EL said you can't. Per the docs:

Using this parameter will automatically cause ExpressionEngine to ignore any category information specified via the URL. For instance, if you are on a "category page" (e.g. a /C13/ segment in the URL) that will be completely ignored in favor of whatever you have specified via the parameter. 

The EL Supoprt response to acheive it:

But I think you can work around it without it being too clunky. If there’s no category indicator in the url, you want to have the category=“not x”, but if there IS a category indicator, you want it to be purely dynamic- yes?

Note- I would put all of the ‘guts’ of my channel tag in a snippet, so I don’t have to clutter up my template.

Then I’d do a template along the lines of:

{if segment_3 == 'category'} {exp:channel:entries whatever…..} {snip} {/exp:channel:entries} {/if}

{if segment_3 != 'category'} {exp:channel:entries category="not 39" whatever…..} {snip} {/exp:channel:entries} {/if}

Note I used 2 simple conditionals rather than an if/else- because I want them parsed early so that only one of those entry tags is run. That’s for optimization.