If you are printing on a black and white printer ... change the color to yellow instead of gray. When yellow is converted to gray it comes out lighter than the gray that you can select in VFP.
>at present i use the process of banding for all my reports, where every alternate line has a grey coloured background, however when faxing such reports the grey / silver which is inherent in the selection is too dark, how can i choose a light grey colour for the background in my reports