I managed to find something that works, although the styling doesn’t seem to and I can’t get it to look the way I want so I’m going to use simple html and some copy + paste.
Anyhow I used some code borrowed from a post about images https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/290586?replies=7
<?php
$categories = get_categories('exclude=54,797,61,1108,936,826,1056,937,64,774,775,776,67,69,1030,859,1');
foreach ($categories as $cat) {
echo '<b><a href="'.get_category_link( $cat->cat_ID ).'">'.$cat->cat_name.'</a></b>'. category_description( $cat->cat_ID).'' ;
}
?>