A

Anonymous

Answered

How do I clear a radio button?

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
January 5, 2017
16 replies
228011 views

Is it possible to deselect a choice in a radio button group on a fillable PDF? There are times a radio button choice may be selected accidentally. When this happens, the only choice one may have is to abandon the form they have been completing, and start from scratch in hopes the mistake is not made again. Our forms are very detailed and with multiple pages and combinations of drop downs, check boxes, radio buttons, text boxes, etc... with questions totaling well over 100. You can imagine someone's frustration if they've completed over 100 questions and near the end of the form there's a radio button question they did not mean to answer... The radio buttons are used exclusively for one choice selections only, otherwise check boxes are used. I'm interested in any simple solutions. Maybe Adobe can come up with a solution. I don't understand why radio buttons don't function the same way as check boxes. If you click once, it's marked; if you click again, it clear. Any help is greatly appreciated. Detailed steps for the fix are also appreciated. Thanks!

Correct answer try67

This is the functional definition of radio-buttons. Once a selection is made, you can only switch from one button to another, not de-select them entirely (unless you reset the form).

If you want to be able to de-select the buttons then you should use check-boxes. Give them the same name but different export values and they'll function just like radio-buttons (ie, when you click on button in a group the selected one becomes un-selected), with the additional feature that you could de-select a button but clicking it.

Show previous replies

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Eric22455030vydf

New Participant

An alternative to clearing the form is to combine the target group with another group, then split them apart.

Create a new radio group, change the name of the target group to the same name as the new group (the new group will now have 4 buttons). Then change the name of the target group back to the desired name. The radio buttons will be unchecked.

try67

Adobe Expert

That is an incredibly convoluted solution to a problem that can be easily solved with a single line of code.

L

lanecl1

New Participant

Edit->Clear Form.

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aaron2a

New Participant

So you accidentally clicked a button and saved your complete form. We found a work-around to deal with this. Basically what you do is add a button to the form under the same group-> go to the preview -> Select the new button -> Sacrifice that button with the selection in it by deleting it.

try67

Adobe Expert

That's a very cumbersome way of solving this issue. You can just clear the form, or run this JavaScript code to clear this one field:

this.resetForm(["Radio1"]);

(replace "Radio1" with the actual field name, of course)

F

fere5FC7

New Participant

In the case of ...

"There are times a radio button choice may be selected accidentally. When this happens, the only choice one may have is to abandon the form they have been completing...."

... then, the Edit / Undo action worked for me,

near the end of a long form, which I was about to abandon, after I searched for help, to no avail, and just before I clicked on "NO, do not save changes before closing " ...

LarsenLP

New Participant

This is actually a brilliant advice. Nice workaround!

try67Correct answer

Adobe Expert

This is the functional definition of radio-buttons. Once a selection is made, you can only switch from one button to another, not de-select them entirely (unless you reset the form).

If you want to be able to de-select the buttons then you should use check-boxes. Give them the same name but different export values and they'll function just like radio-buttons (ie, when you click on button in a group the selected one becomes un-selected), with the additional feature that you could de-select a button but clicking it.

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Anonymous

Thanks TRY67...my reply crossed yours. Good to know I can use check boxes. I'll play with that.

Ned Murphy

Brainiac

One option is to always include an extra "N/A" option that is preselected. That way if someone did not intend to answer they can recheck.

As far as Adobe changing the way radio buttons work goes, don't count on it. I believe it is an industry standard for radio buttons - I do understand the frustration you describe when you cannot deselect.

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Anonymous

Thanks for the very prompt response! Yes, I was hoping to avoid any additional selections on the forms. They are quite dense and use a size 9 font. You can imagine, I'm sure, there is very limited space. If we used a standard size 12 font, many of our forms would be over 4 pages... I understand what you mean by industry standard. Is there a way to set a check box to a select one only? Thanks again.

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