Your method of commenting out the form on the page is the correct way to go to make it Express Checkout only.
As for the transactions not showing on your PayPal profile this should only be occurring if you have the store set to test mode, or perhaps the sandbox. I think you would know if you were using the Sandbox credentials though. Check on the test mode setting in your globals file and make sure that it is set to false like this:
$WAGLOBAL_Test_Mode = false;