What version of Finale? What procedure are you following? Your exact steps, please.

I am using Finale PrintMusic 2014. 

I phoned the support service, which is about to be cut off (to be online only), and they could not solve these issues.

To hide all default rests I tried this, which did not work, because "display rests in empty measures" is a not included in my staff attributes menu:

You can hide "default whole rests" with the Staff Tool:
either de-select "Display Rests in Empty Measures" in the Staff Attributes (globally),
or
de-select "Display Rests in Empty Measures" with a staff style (locally).

To hide individual default  rests I tried another strategy from the User Manual:

using Speedy Entry, select the note and press O or H

using Simple Entry, control click the note and press H

This works for real rests, not default rests. One of the main things I do with notation software is to prepare assignments for students who need to write on a hard copy paper with no rests on it, so this is a major problem for me. Thanks for any advice!

Catherine,

Those staff style instructions are for the full Finale, and not applicable to PrintMusic. If they are in your PM manual, it's (another) documentation error.

The only ways to hide rests in PM are with the H key in Simple, or the H or O keys in Speedy. They have to be done individually, not globally. And as you have discovered, this only works for "real" rests. If you want a measure to appear empty, you would have to enter a real whole rest, and hide it.

Sorry.

Yes, I have the same problem.  Creating  theory exercises for students to fill in the correct notes or rests.  And of course, PrintMusic has already filled in default rests for me..  Again, I am totally defeated.  The "easiest" think is IMPOSSIBLE!   I tried to insert a REAL rest over the DEFAULT rest.  Then I tried to HIDE it with H from the Simple Command.  But it didn't work.   I wrote to support about this, and they answered but their answer was lost when my harddrive crashed.  Also they didn't save the answer on my "account".. They saved only a few recent answers.  

I bought Print Music in 1999 and Finale in 2001.  Still frustrated and unable to do the simplest thing.  I never used Finale much because it was so complicated, so i went back to using PrintMusic.

Are you still using PrintMusc 1999?

How are you entering notes and rests? Mouse? QWERTY keyboard? MIDI keyboard?