thanks t-p. I reread the info there, made sure I did everything correctly, and “pretty permalinks” still arent working. However i was able to add index.php before /%category%//%postname%/ that got it going with the exception that I now have index.php before the permalinks which won’t match the live server.
From reading what you sent to me I am led to believe that it is a problem with apache running on windows.
“Pretty” permalinks usually require mod_rewrite, and IIS (common on Windows servers) does not support mod_rewrite. (If you are using Apache 2.0.54, on Windows, mod_rewrite may work, provided it is enabled in apache\conf\httpd.conf.)
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Using_Permalinks
Thanks