Turn off alternate row color

[dombrowb]

Hello,

I am wondering if someone can tell me how to set the default in Access 2010 so that alternate row colors do not display when you create a new table, query or report.

Thank you,

Brian

[aytee111]

Report: Detail Section: Properties - Alternate Back Color

I don't know if you can for tables and queries, why would you want to?

[wgw]

If you're trying to do it in reports, see attached pdf. There are two many "Alternate row color" choices scattered around different areas of Access 2010. Microsoft needs to clear this up; at least I think so. It took days for me to figure this out. Or maybe it's just a reflection of my Access skills. I am, after all, new to it. Hope it helps.

Hello,

I am wondering if someone can tell me how to set the default in Access 2010 so that alternate row colors do not display when you create a new table, query or report.

Thank you,

Brian

[django]

I also would like to be able to set the default alternate row color option to none. To answer the question of a previous post, why would I want to do this, let me explain what I think should be obvious. Alternating row color is not particularly helpful for me. Having worked with tabular row oriented data for many years now there are a visual methods far superior to the zebra effect of the overly simplistic method of alternating every other row. For example there is the method of grouping and spacing developed many years ago for steam table data. In this method there is no color, but a blank line is inserted between every five rows of data. Visually after a bit of practice this format has the benefit of allowing the reader the ability to orient his or her self within the dataset in a way that alternate colored rows do not. Each set of 5 records provides a grouping that is manageable to navigate with respect to the top row, middle row and bottom row as well as second from the top and second from the bottom. It provides, for me, pattern recognition of much greater value than this ridiculous zebra effect that I find only distracting.

Worse however is the wrinkle in time approach msft has adopted with their incredibly lazy feature set of default formatting options on the datasheet tab of Access Options. I am amazed that I have to hack the registry via a Google search simply to add a key "Default Font Name" to get Consolas rather than simply being able to select it from this GUI location where it should be provided along with the option to turn off alternating row color. Furthermore, if the Access/Office development team had anyone that actually used the product for large dataset work they might even offer options like formatting default datasets steam table style, etc....