Is there a way of getting rid of all the names of towns that appear on maps as standard? I only want the locations I've imported from Excel to show up; sometimes I don't even need the roads.

You can select the map display that you want – from road to terrain, data or political. You can also change the Map Font to tweak the label display on the map. Using Territories also influences the display of labels on the map. However, there is no extensive direct control of what labels are and aren’t displayed on the map.