[albee1952]

I'm guessing you have to log in to access "projects" that live in the cloud? If you create "sessions" instead of projects, sessions live on your local hard drive. Given how cloud-based projects are currently working(not very well), I would stick with local sessions.

Re the solo issue, there are a couple of things to look for:
1-do you have multiple tracks made into a "group"? Group attributes allows for all tracks in a group to solo together(show groups and deactivate them).
2-In the regular versions of PT, its possible to Ctrl-click on a solo button so that it will be locked out(this is called "solo safe"). You might solo-safe an AUX track with a reverb or delay, so when you solo something like a vocal track, you would still hear the reverb/delay, even though you did not ALSO solo the AUX track.(I'm not sure if PTF also has this feature).
3-youtube has lots of tutorials for free(some are better than others). Groove3 is a site with very good tutorials, but you pay to have access.
4-PTF is very limited and is designed to give you an idea how PT works, but not give you enough versatility to do what most of us would call "real work". My own preference is to recommend either buying the regular version(usually called Pro Tools "vanilla", as opposed to Pro Tools "Ultimate", which you don't need), OR, look at some other DAW options(most of which are not filled with the shortcomings of PT First).