Well, give the conditional formatting a try... see how it works for you. It may do the
job just fine. But if your recordsets/tables are large, you may see a performance
decrease.
Personally, I never use datasheet view, particularly those forms that interface with the
users.
For example, my text controls are light yellow, numeric and currency light green, and
dates light blue, so conditionaly formatting all those columns for the sake of color,
would not be productive.