Permalinks

When you Update the permalinks look closely for the message it shows – what does it say?

I suspect your .htaccess is either not present or not writable.

https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Permalinks#Using_.22Pretty.22_permalinks

It is not their. Where is it supposed to go? Main directory?

It should go in the same directory as your wp-config.php

Yahoo hosting will not let me rename the file too .htaccess

They do not use htaccess. They say it is a security risk??? Any ideas?. I wanted to do this to add a sitemap for Google. Does https://example.com/?p=N hurt me in Googles eyes?