Thanks you two. It's odd. When I tried setting some of the interfaces into trunk mode it said I couldn't if the encapsulation was in auto mode. Those few interfaces only let me set it in trunk mode when I specified dot1q encapsulation explicitly first. For all the other interfaces trunk mode setting worked fine. It's as if it defaults to dot1q so doesn't require it explicitly but if you ever changed off of it, going forward you'd have to specify it manually first.
MKguy: We tried following that article but there were a few issues/questions.
1. The use of "no ip address" was not seen in many vmware discussions. Trying to understand that one better, although HeathReynolds says we don't need it. Case in point. Also it says to use access mode, yet everywhere else says trunk mode. It also doesn't mention edge portfast setting yet other vmware articles do.