How do I clear a radio button?

[Guest]

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!

[Cynthesize]

Haha well I just found Check Box Style, I am happy, but I still like the radio-button style better! 🙂

[kathryne81844580]

Super! Brilliant. Thank you so much for this!

[ujokasjdflkjawkfjasdf]

Thank you for explaining the functionality of radio buttons and offering a workaround using checkboxes. While it’s true that radio buttons were inspired by old car radio buttons—where one button was always pressed in while others popped out—the analogy doesn’t fully align with digital radio buttons.

In the physical radio buttons, one choice was always selected because of their mechanical design, but digital radio buttons operate differently. By default, they start with no button selected, which contradicts the idea that they must always have an option chosen, as in the physical counterparts. The concept behind radio buttons is simply to limit the user to one selection within a group, not necessarily to require a selection at all times.

It does feel a bit outdated in the digital space to disallow deselecting a choice without resetting the form entirely. The functionality of selecting only one at a time can still be preserved without forcing a choice to remain locked in. I appreciate the workaround with checkboxes to allow deselection, though ideally, native support for this feature would be beneficial. Thanks again for sharing your approach!

[Andrea24279977nkpc]

I could uncheck the radio button by adding a new additional one in the same group, previewing the form and checking the new button, then deleting it and saving the form.

[try67]

Or you could simply clear the form...

[Andrea24279977nkpc]

not if you want to keep all data already entered, as clearing the form will remove all of them in addition to resetting the radio buttons

[fere5FC7]

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]

This is actually a brilliant advice. Nice workaround!

[PrintingServices]

That requires some user intelligence, which is not guaranteed.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Here is a sample PDF with your Radio and Checkbox options.

[PrintingServices]

This is great, David, thanks very much for posting it.

[aaron2a]

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]

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)

[lanecl1]

Edit->Clear Form.

[Eric22455030vydf]

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]

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

[christyr89668360]

If you, as the form creator/owner, want to reset the form, you can just do it the way it's mentioned below (Tools - Forms - Preapare Form - More Options - Clear Form). BUT, if you want the end user to be able to deselect radio buttons or you just want a quick way to clear the form (or just specific fields) it is possible to add a button to your PDF to do just that.  

Here's how to create & label the button:

Place the button form field on your form where you want it, give it a name and click the All Properties link. This opens the Button Properties dialog box. Click the Actions tab, then choose Reset a form in the Select Action from the drop down list. Next, click Add..., and select the fields you want to reset in the Reset a Form dialog box. Click OK. On the Options tab you can give the button a label. If you don't, the button will be blank and the end user won't know what it's for. 

[ScottVC]

In Acrobat 2024, if you are the author creating the form and need to reset it after testing, go to All Tools > Prepare a Form. Then in the Fields panel on the right side there is an Options menu (three dots) which has Clear Form. 

[bricec79743151]

One way to do this is to toggle the option "button is checked by default" on/off.

[John F. Chionglo]

If you want to modify the behavior of the radio button group such that the selected radio button can be unselected by clicking on it then here is one way to do it. For this example consider three radio buttons in the group and the radio button group's name is "RadioButton1". The following code should be added as a document-level script:

var rb = getField("RadioButton1");
rb.exportValues = [ "First", "Second", "Third" ];
var cval = "";

The following code should be added to every radio button that should be unselected:

if (cval==rb.value) {
  rb.value = "";
  cval = "";
} else {
  cval = rb.value;
}

I have included an example PDF document with radio buttons that behave as you required.

[try67]

Use check-boxes instead of radio-buttons.

[Kattoinette]

This worked beautifully for one set of buttons, but when I tried to modify it for multiple sets, it no longer deselects. What happened?

[Jessame31712352om9h]

All the answers here are frustrating. If you are on the user end and accidentally selected a "yes" or "no" where you want to leave the question unanswered there is absolutely nothing you can do. Clearing the form is fine if that's the ONLY change you made since opening it, but generally one does not want to have to go back and re-key the entire form just to fix one response. Even if you can crack open the form, editing those radio buttons isn't as straight forward as one might like. Massive time suck created by something that is supposed to make filling out a form easier than printing, completing by hand, and scanning. 

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

You can create a clear button that resets ONLY the radio buttons OR you can use check boxes but set them up like a radio button. The latter option lets the user select only one choice but can deselect if desired.

Typical Radio buttons: Same Field Name; Different Option Export Values.

Typical Check boxes: Different Field Name; Same Option Export Value (e.g. Yes).

"Pseudo" Radio Buttons: Use Check boxes with Same Field Name; Different Option Export Values.

[EcksGonGiveItToYa]

I realize this is an older issue, but there didn't seem to be a clear answer anywhere else. So instead of having to clear the entire form, you can go to Tools>Prepare Form (open the tool). Then select the button that is checked and delete it. Then copy/paste another identical radio button from the form into the right position and then rename. 

There should be a way to change the field value of the button to change it back to being unchecked, but I was unable to make it work in the 15 min it took me to figure out I could just copy/paste an identical empty radio button into it's place after deleting it.