So, I am trying to get my categories, archives, and search results to return titles only. But I am getting results that show the title, byline, one word from the body, and the footer.

I have gone into ATO=>Configure excerpts and set the following options up:

excerpt length = 0
don't strip these tags = <p>
custom read more = empty
selected full posts for home page
show first 3 posts on homepage as full posts
show only excerpts on category, archive, tag, search, and author pages

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

gen
wordpress version 3.0.1.
Atahualpa 3.4.9
url: www.genwithag.com

You might want to take a look at the List Category Posts plugin. That is what I have used that for.