putting all products in home category

[Maryr4277]

Today I discovered that many of our products were removed from the home category. Therefore these products are not showing up when people type their titles into the search bar. They also don't show up when we type the reference number. 

 

I think this happened after the upgrade to 1.6

 

Is there a way to globally make sure that all products are in the home category, so that I don't have to try to figure out which ones are and are not?

 

It actually appears that all products "are" in the home category,  (when I go into the admin side, categories, and sort by "home" - the products all seem to be there, if that is making sense) but when I have found individual ones that don't show up in the search engine, the home category is not checked.

 

Thanks for any help.

 

Mary