6 of 1, half dozen of the other, this works for me. 

             string s = ultraGrid.ActiveRow.Cells["TransactionID"].Text;

And while I'm here, I'm on my 2nd day of evaluation.  One thing causing me confusion, and the reason I ended up here in the forums, I was expecting the above line of code to be written as

             string s = ultraGrid.ActiveRow.Columns["TransactionID"].Text;

I basically wanted to be able to read any of the column values for the currently selected row.  I guess I have to use "Cells" not "Columns" for this, but what I don't understand is, there is a "Columns" property, albeit,

            ultraGrid.ActiveRow.Band.Columns["TransactionID"]

What I don't understand is why I can't read the column value out of the columns collection.  And why "Cells" seems to be used as what I call a "Column".  Any insight on the difference between "Cells" and "Columns" in the grid would be appreciated.

Thanks.