Are you referring to the grid (dots and lines in the background in design view)?

If that is what you are talking about, right  click in an empty area of your form and in the context menu, make sure "grid" is selected (if you want the dots) or unselected if you don't.

I seem to remember Richard telling us that you will not get dots unless your grid is set to a certain size. Can't remember how to set the grid size however, but its out there somewhere!

To adjust the "spacing" of the dots - to be able to see more or less, when the form is selected in design view, on the property format tab, you can adjust the "grid x" and "grid y" until they are spaced or visible as you like. Mine are both set at 24 and I see the "default" dots that show up when Access is installed

Thanks Donald. I can't get dots at all until X and Y are set to 9. Guess that's because default here is metric

That's the reason I changed mine in the Regional Settings.

I'm not looking for dots.  Some of my forms have a slightly wavy design in the background and some do not and the background color is shown as the same.  It seems like I remember backgrounds like this showing up in access 97, but I can't find a way to format the forms in access 2019 or later

Carolyn  "Background 1" is the name of a color theme, one of many on the drop-down list.  By default, it is set to "Automatic," which could mean different colors on different PCs.  To get rid of color themes, you need to change "Background 1" to a "standard color."  Click "..." on the Back Color property and choose one of the "standard colors" or "more colors."  If you have a continuous form, you need to set the "Alternate Back Color" property too.

Carolyn Ahh, were some of the forms originally created with a background image/picture? You can look in the form properties to see. If so, then you can just set the forms that don't have it to use the same image.

If not, would need to see one of your forms that has it to see because my searches have never shown any default backgrounds in any Access version (not that AI/search are always right). Or maybe the database was originally created from a template or part of a template that had them in it.