I can't disallow any of my posts using any of these methods

I want to disallow some of my posts from appearing in YARRP, and have tried the following:

• Using <!–noyarpp–> in the post’s text editor
• Unpublishing the posts
• Changing the posts to drafts
• Changing the posts to private
• Changing the posts to password protected (Yes, ‘Show password protected posts?’ is unchecked)

https://wordpress.org/plugins/yet-another-related-posts-plugin/