suggest you try changing from Datasheet view to Continuous Forms view. you
can format the form in design view to look very much like a datasheet, *but*
you can also hide the RecordSelectors, the DividingLines, make the controls
transparent to show the background color of the subform object, etc - in
short, you have much more control of how the subform looks when in form
view. the only things that will still be gray are the NavigationBar and the
ScrollBar(s) - and you can simply hide those if you don't need them.
if your data will be viewed but not edited, another option is to use a
Listbox control. you can't make the control's Background transparent, but
you *can* set it to the same color as the subform's background, and you can
make the control's BorderStyle transparent. these two setting will
effectively make the data list seem to sit directly on the subform, with the
only "gray" elements being the vertical/horizontal scroll bars which will
automatically appear or not according to the contents of the list box.
hth