Thunderbolt SSD will not format to APFS

I apologize for wasting everybody's time.

I could have swore that I had tried this yesterday but........you have to select GUID and not Master Boot Record under scheme. Once you have done that, then all of the formatting options for APFS, APFS encrypted, Mac OS, etc. will then appear. I swore yesterday, so I guess I will swear the rest of the day. Many apologies for this brain dead post.

So, as a wrap up, if you have plugged in your new Samsung X5 which comes reformatted ExFAT,

The following is assuming you want to ERASE and reformat everything! ! !

This is my personal policy anytime receiving a new/used hard drive or SSD which could contain viruses, etc.

Open Disk Utility

Select Samsung Portable SSD X5 Media in the left column

Select Erase in the top window bar

Select GUID Partition Map in the drop down for Scheme

Type in whatever you want for Name e.g. 1tbSSD

Select APFS encrypted (or whatever format you want, this is my personal recommendation-unreadable by Windows BTW)

Pause for 1 moment and make sure that erasing everything is OK............

Select Erase

I then select each of the Items under and including Samsung Portable SSD X5 Media and run First Aid on each item just to make sure there is no problems.

Quit Disk Utility and your new super fast Samsung SSD should now appear in your Finder windows under Devices

I downloaded the software and do not find any "activation". The only thing the software offered to do was encrypt the drive which I do not really want Samsung to handle.

My ideal setup is to have it formatted APFS with Apple's encryption, but would settle for HPFS with encryption. As best as I can tell, APFS is not an option and only HPFS without encryption (unless I use Samsung's) is my choice.

Conversion is not a factor, as I don't have anything on the drive and could just format it initially to APFS with encryption if I could figure out how to do it. Disk Utility is not offereing that option.