Your formfields (and other parts of your document) have had a Style named 'Placeholder text' applied to them, which sets the grey font, but someone has then overridden various properties of that Style with direct formatting. Moreover, the default text appearing in those formfields has not been set as such via the formfield properties. Rather, someone has typed that data into empty formfields, which have been unprotected before applying the 'Automatic' (black) font colour to the first character in each. A real dog's breakfast.

I don't get the 'first letter is black and the remaining letters are grey' behaviour you refer to when filling in the formfields, however. For me, the entire formfield's input is formatted as Arial, with the 'Automatic' (black) font colour.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]