hi eric -

thanks for your response. the only relationship with the recordset and adodc was that i was trying to put the sql in the record source property. i had already created a recordset in code but i didn't know that i didn't have to use the adodc to get the datagrid to work. so i deleted that adodc and just kept the datagrid. i have my code similar to your psuedo code and i set the datagrid.datasource = rsObj which i have this in the load of my form. the error that i'm getting now states:

run-time error '7004': the rowset is not bookmarkable.

i'm not really sure what this means. so just to make sure i understand this correctly, i only need to use this code below?

oConn.Open strConnection
rsObj.ActiveConnection = oConn
rsObj.Open strQuery, , adOpenDynamic, adLockPessimistic
set DataGrid1.datasource = rsObj

since this isn't working for me, could it be because it's not in the right part of a form? it's in the load method.

thank you so much for your help.

piper