Is there a practical way to reset/unfill radio buttons in Acrobat?

Is there a way to unfill/deslect radio buttons when using a a fillable PDF? I have some optional questions I’d like to use radio buttons for. If someone selects an option for a question they shouldn't have, it’s a real problem for my project. Not having a way to easily undo them is really impractical I know it can be done via ctrl + z and also clears the entire form. But these aren’t really practical because they could involve erasing a lot of data. Is there a simple way that always works? Seems like a common sense feature to have

55.9k 23 23 gold badges 168 168 silver badges 215 215 bronze badges asked Mar 8, 2022 at 0:16 13 1 1 silver badge 3 3 bronze badges

2 Answers 2

This problem is not specific to PDFs.

I have faced the exact same issue in HTML. And the way I deal wit this in HTML is to actually set “N/A” (meaning “Not Applicable”) value as a radio button.

Someone who accidentally checked something on a question can just click the “N/A” option to effectively reset it.

The “N/A” value I set is typically an empty value. So I am unsure where the PDF data goes to, as the song said, “nothing from nothing leaves nothing.” An empty value is an empty value and that is that!

answered Mar 8, 2022 at 0:28 Giacomo1968 Giacomo1968 55.9k 23 23 gold badges 168 168 silver badges 215 215 bronze badges

So you'd add a radio button for NA? This seems practical (if not that clean option for my project. I have an existing form I can't alter, so I'd have to hide the button by making the same color as the background)

Commented Mar 8, 2022 at 0:35

So, what you actually want to do is set a "illegal" state for radio buttons (everything unchecked is per definition not legal…".

When you do set that "empty" state programmatically only (no direct interaction by the user on the radio buttons, but clicking on another Push-button, or have code do it, you can set the value of the radio button field group to "Off" , and you are done.

When you want the user to "unselect" the selection of the radio button, you can not use Radio Buttons. BUT, you can use Check Box fields instead. Give the fields the same name, but different export values. This makes them behave like radio buttons, but you can uncheck your selection manually. And that's it. Programmatically unchecking is the same, by setting the field value to "Off" .