The professional version of the Atlas used by Astro Gold is used around the world. For any country EXCEPT the USA you type the country name Country or US State field. However, you do not do this for the USA, but instead the state name in the “country” field. For instance, you should enter “CA” or “California” (not “USA”) into the “country” field if you want to look up Los Angeles. If you do enter “USA” in the “country” field, and then you will find that Astro Gold tells you that it can’t find either the country or the place.

The reason that the ACS uses this different protocol for US places is that there are many duplicate names in different US states, so if the state name is not known it would often result in getting the wrong place. So, the Atlas requires ‘states’ for the USA, and country names for everywhere else.