The hide country option is at:
Main Menu > Tools > Options > Names, Dates, Places Tab > Lower Right corner > Place Options > 1) Check PNA when entering names 2) Exclude selected country.
I suggest you leave that as None and put USA for everyplace in the USA to distinguish from foreign countries; but that is certainly up to you.
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For your duplicate places question, try this:
Places Workspace, find one of the places in the right panel.
Right Click > Replace with another place name.
Replace with the duplicate
Click ok.
You should now have one place name for that place.
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I used to use abbreviations for states also when I did all input manually. Now that I use ancestry databases for a lot of my work, most records come into FTM with the full state names, so I've changed all of my old state abbreviations. Also removes doubt about MI vs MA vs MS and AL vs AK vs AB and so on. I still get confused what the abbreviations are for Maryland vs Massachusetts or Mississsippi vs Michigan.
Main Menu > Tools > Options > Names, Dates, Places Tab > Lower Right corner > Place Options > 1) Check PNA when entering names 2) Exclude selected country.
I suggest you leave that as None and put USA for everyplace in the USA to distinguish from foreign countries; but that is certainly up to you.
_____________________
For your duplicate places question, try this:
Places Workspace, find one of the places in the right panel.
Right Click > Replace with another place name.
Replace with the duplicate
Click ok.
You should now have one place name for that place.
______________
I used to use abbreviations for states also when I did all input manually. Now that I use ancestry databases for a lot of my work, most records come into FTM with the full state names, so I've changed all of my old state abbreviations. Also removes doubt about MI vs MA vs MS and AL vs AK vs AB and so on. I still get confused what the abbreviations are for Maryland vs Massachusetts or Mississsippi vs Michigan.