List Form Fields with this Acrobat XI Pro Action

Jonathan Schreiber, a very smart colleague of mine who specializes in Adobe EchoSign, asked me if it was possible to list all of the form fields in a PDF. Jonathan was developing an application to map the Acrobat form fields to a custom API for EchoSign.

If you don’t understand what any of that means, don’t worry about it. If you develop PDF forms, it can be useful to have an inventory of all of the fields. That can help you check for errors and better understand tabbing order and naming.

Oddly, although the Forms panel in Acrobat shows a list of them, there is no way to export the list.

So, I cooked up an Acrobat Action which uses a custom JavaScript to write all of the field names, in order, to the JavaScript console:

https://blog.adobe.com/media_96bff09e189b0329cdcae2b9a5bd8d8c164f38bf.gif

You can select the text in the Console and copy it into another application or (top tip!) choose Create PDF from Clipboard in Acrobat to create a new PDF listing your fields.

Installing the Action

  1. Download the List Form Fields Action here
  2. Unzip the file
  3. Rename the action to List Form Fields.sequ
  4. Double-click the .SEQU file to import to Acrobat.

Some Set-Up

Most folks should be able to use the Action to write the form fields list to the JavaScript Console. However, it wouldn’t hurt to make sure that your JavaScript settings are set correctly so that it works.

Choose Edit>Preferences and select the JavaScript category. On the Mac, choose the Application menu, then Preferences.

Make sure your JavaScript Prefs look like this:

https://blog.adobe.com/media_f87a68411d7bdf289558f91b2a145780e4edf716.gif

Using the Action

Here’s how to use the List Form Fields action:

  1. Open a PDF with form fields
  2. Open the Tools pane then open the Actions section
  3. Locate the List Form Fields action and click on ithttps://blog.adobe.com/media_2cbd1989e338a075a7227719fe2487885184b43f.gif
  4. Click the Start button
    https://blog.adobe.com/media_de3f820360e529531cb294e78fe9985f3be72cb6.gif

A few Notes about the Action

The Action works on both AcroForms (traditional Acrobat forms) as well as LiveCycle Designer (XML-based) forms.

If your organization deploys Acrobat with JavaScript turned off and locked, you will not be able to run this Action. If your JavaScript preferences are grayed out, that is likely the case.