How can i deselect an option from a dropdown, when that respective dropdown is not a “multi-select” / java & Selenium

Question

I tried to use the objname.deselectByVisibileText() on multiple dropdowns (select/span) and I get the following error

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException: You may only deselect options of a multi-select.

How can I clear those respective fields? My method atm looks like this:

public void deselect(String s, String t)
{
    WebElement element = wait.until(ExpectedConditions.presenceOfElementLocated(By.xpath(s)));
    Select select = new Select(element);
    select.deselectByVisibleText(t);
}

Obviously, I need a solution without deselect, as none of them work ( byValue , byIndex , etc.) due to the same error as above.

Answer 1

Typically the first option is the default. You can just select it.

select.selectByIndex(0);

Answer 2

If you have a select element that looks like this:

<select id="ddlViewBy">
  <option value="1">test1</option>
  <option value="2" selected="selected">test2</option>
  <option value="3">test3</option>
</select>

Running the code:

var e = document.getElementById("ddlViewBy");
var strUser = e.options[e.selectedIndex];

would return the selected option. Now you got to know the selected index. So, use javascript executor to unselect it