Hi Jay,
Thank you for the clarifications.
You can access the Cell visual element's Text property only in the CellFormatting event because RadGridView is virtualized control and a few visual items (for example 25) represents many logical items (the whole table) e.g. the visual items are reused. In the other places you can access only the Value property from the logical items.
Should you have any other questions or suggestions, do not hesitate to contact us.
Kind regards,
Peter
the Telerik team