Workaround for PSE 6 "Exclude photos from category" bug

Question

PSE 6 Organizer broke the ability to exclude from a search all photos tagged with a category or a tag within that category. Heres a partial workaround:
Suppose you want to show all photos not tagged with the Places category or a tag within the Places category. In previous versions, youd right-click Places in the Keywords Pane and select Exclude photos with Places category from search results. Thats broken in PSE 6 so instead, do this:
1. In the Find bar, Show All. (This shows all photos.)
2. In the Keyword Tags pane, check the box to the left of Places. (This shows only those photos tagged with Places or a tag within the Places category.)
3. In the Find bar, select Options > Hide Best Match Results and then select Options > Show Results that Do Not Match. (Only photos not tagged with Places or a tag within the Places category will be shown.)
Unfortunately, you cant combine this workaround with additional search criteria, i.e. all photos without a Places tag and in the date range 1986 2000.
Thanks much to JonE at Elements Village who suggested this.

Answer 1

Thomas,
Yeah, that's the limitation of the workaround.
Unfortunately, this is still broken in PSE 7. Its ironic that your use-case is precisely the one described in the PSE 6 and 7 User Guides as an example of how to use exclusion.
The text search box in PSE 7 provides a partial workaround for some uses of exclusion. You can do not places to find photos not yet tagged with any tag in the Places category. You can do not people to find all photos with no tags in the People category. But larry and not people wont find photos containing just Larry and not any other people it excludes all photos with any tag in the People category.
Another limitation of the text search box is that it matches all the text in the photo tags, categories, captions, notes, etc. So when I search for jasper, I get photos tagged with People > Friends > Jasper as well as Places > Jasper National Park.