The grid always sets the ActiveRow to the first GroupByRow when you group. There is currently no way to stop this from happening.

But it looks like there is no particular appearance applied to the active GroupByRow in the grid, anyway. What you are seeing is most likely the highlight because the first GroupByRow is selected. I don't think there is any way to stop this from happening, but you can clear the selection after the grid is grouped.

It's a bit tricky, though, since the grouping normally happens asynchronously.

        private void ultraGrid1_InitializeLayout(object sender, Infragistics.Win.UltraWinGrid.InitializeLayoutEventArgs e)
        {
            UltraGrid grid = (UltraGrid)sender;

            e.Layout.ViewStyleBand = ViewStyleBand.OutlookGroupBy;
            e.Layout.Bands[0].SortedColumns.Add("Int32 1", false, true);

            // We need to force the verification of the child elements so that the grouping and 
            // selection of the first row happen immediately. 
            e.Layout.UIElement.VerifyChildElements();

            //grid.ActiveRow = null;
            grid.Selected.Rows.Clear();
        }

Hi Mike,

I'm having the same issue. I need the grid to show which row is active; I just don't want the grid to automatically select a row initially. I tried setting SyncWithCurrencyManager to false, but that didn't seem to change anything.

The call stack tells me the grid's ActiveRow property is being set by the RowsCollection.InitGroupByRows method. Reflector tells me that this method sets a private boolean field (inInitGroupByRows) to true which is set back to false at the end of the method. So, here's my solution. Is there a better way to do this that doesn't involve using reflection to get the value of a private field?

        private void OnGridAfterRowActivate(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            if (this.IsGridInitializingGroupByRows() && this.Grid.ActiveRow != null)
            {
                this.Grid.ActiveRow = null;
            }
        }

        private bool IsGridInitializingGroupByRows()
        {
            return (bool)this.Grid.Rows.GetType().InvokeMember("inInitGroupByRows", BindingFlags.GetField | BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance, null, this.Grid.Rows, null);
        }