How to view form field names in a pdf document

I appreciate this question is a bit old but in case anyone else comes across it the PDF Toolkit will allow you to do this very simply with a command that looks like this (where the PDF you want the form fields from is called docsOfInterest.pdf:

pdftk docOfInterest.pdf dump_data_fields

It's likely you'll find a user-friendly application to do this for you, but this is how I achieve it with a little VBScript...

1. Download and Install ABCpdf from webSupergoo, available here...

2. Copy the following script into a text file and save it with a '.vbs' file extension.

3. Place a copy of your PDF file into the same folder as the script, naming it 'myForm.pdf'.

4. Double-click the script file to run.

---

Set theDoc = CreateObject("ABCpdf8.Doc")
theDoc.Read "myForm.pdf"
theDoc.AddFont "Helvetica-Bold"
theDoc.FontSize=16
theDoc.Rect.Pin=1

Dim theIDs, theList
theIDs = theDoc.GetInfo(theDoc.Root, "Field IDs")
theList = Split(theIDs, ",")

For Each id In theList
    theDoc.Page = theDoc.GetInfo(id, "Page")
    theDoc.Rect.String = theDoc.GetInfo(id, "Rect")
    theDoc.Color.String = "240 240 255"
    theDoc.FillRect()
    theDoc.Rect.Height = 16
    theDoc.Color.String = "220 0 0"
    theDoc.AddText(theDoc.GetInfo(id, "Name"))
    theDoc.Delete(id)
Next

theDoc.Save "output.pdf"
theDoc.Clear
MsgBox "Finished"

After the script finishes you should find another PDF document named 'output.pdf' appears in the same folder, with all the field names overlayed on top of the fields.

As far as I know you can't do it with Acrobat Reader. You can use their PDF writer program (Currently Acrobat XI) to do it, but it's fairly pricey.

I had to do the same thing for just a few documents. I just downloaded the trial version of deskPDF Studio X. From the menu, going to Forms > Modify Form Layout lets you see the name of the fields.

Be aware working with their free trial version will stamp documents with a watermark if you save the document.