How to clear a PDF form and start again

Clearing a PDF form takes one command in PDF by Zaweba. Choose Form, then Clear form, and everything that can be changed is emptied. If you'd rather go back to the values the form came with, such as a default country or a pre-ticked box, choose Form, then Reset form instead. The app is free and runs offline on Windows.

Those two commands sound alike, so it helps to know when to use each.

Clear form or Reset form

Clear form empties every field that can be changed. Text boxes go blank, check boxes untick, and choices go back to nothing selected. Use it when you want a truly empty form, for example to send a clean copy to someone else.

Reset form puts back the form's own starting values. Whoever designed the form may have set some fields to begin with an answer already in them, perhaps a country or a quantity of one. Reset brings those back, so the form looks as it did when it was first opened. Use it when you want to fill the form in again from the start, the way its maker intended.

On a form with no starting values, the two give the same result.

Clearing it step by step

Open the filled PDF in PDF by Zaweba. Before you clear anything, think about whether you need the answers. If you do, either save a copy under a new name first, or export the form data so you have the values in a separate file. Export saves them as XFDF, FDF, XML, CSV or tab-separated text, and Import can fill the form again from that file later.

Then choose Form, followed by Clear form or Reset form. Check the result, then save. If you want to keep the filled version too, use Save as and give the empty one a new name.

When clearing won't work

Some forms look filled but have no live fields. If someone filled in a form and then flattened it, the answers were drawn into the page and the fields were removed. Clear form has nothing to clear, because there are no fields left. In that case the only fix is to go back to an unflattened copy, or to start from the blank original.

Another case is text added with Fill and sign on a flat form. Those items stay as separate annotations until they are flattened, and saving flattens them by default (a setting you can change). If they're still separate, you can select and delete them. If they've been flattened, they're now real text on the page.

A protected form may also stop you changing fields. If the file has a permissions password that limits filling in forms, you'll need that password before you can remove security and clear it.

Checking it is empty

Use the Form fields panel to check the form really is empty. It lists every field with its page, kind and value, and you can filter for required fields that are still empty, which on a freshly cleared form should be all of them.

If you're preparing a form to send out after testing it yourself, clear it as the very last step before saving. It's easy to fill in a test name, forget, and send it to fifty people.

PDF by Zaweba keeps both options a click away in the Form menu, so you can tidy a form in seconds.