title: Unselecting ng-options dropdown in AngularJS
body: <p>I've created a select dropdown using ng-options that is used to filter a list on the page.When the page loads, the dropdown is blank and no filtering has occurred.</p>
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/Q28Bp.png" alt="on initial page load" /></p>
  <p>When I select an option, filtering happens properly, but the blank option disappears, and thus I am forced to have a department-filtered version of the list unless I refresh the page and start over:</p>
  <p>Before:
  <img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/q5owG.png" alt="Before Selecting, the blank option still there" /></p>
  <p>After:
  <img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/jXzZt.png" alt="Blank option gone" /></p>
  <p>Here is my code:</p>
  <p>.html file:</p>
  <pre><code>         Department:
          &lt;select ng-model=&quot;search.SubDepartmentID&quot; ng-options=&quot;d.SubDepartmentID as d.DepartmentLabel for d in DepartmentList&quot;&gt;&lt;/select&gt;
          
          &lt;br /&gt;
          &lt;div class=&quot;span10&quot;&gt;
              &lt;!--Body content--&gt;
  
              &lt;ul&gt;
                  &lt;li ng-repeat=&quot;(index,e) in filteredEmployees | filter:search | orderBy:orderProp | startFrom:(currentPage - 1)*pageSize | limitTo:pageSize&quot;
                      class=&quot;thumbnail employee-listing&quot;&gt;
                      &lt;a href=&quot;#/Employee/{{e.EmployeeID}}&quot; class=&quot;thumb&quot;&gt;
                          &lt;img style=&quot;height: 100px; width: auto;&quot; ng-src=&quot;../Images/CurrentEmployees/{{e.ImageName}}&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
                      &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;#/Employee/{{e.EmployeeID}}&quot;&gt;{{e.FullName}}&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
                      &lt;p&gt;{{e.Department}}&lt;/p&gt;
                  &lt;/li&gt;
              &lt;/ul&gt;
  </code></pre>
  <p>I want to be able to return it to the blank option so that I have a completely unfiltered list.  Doing a value=&quot;&quot; option or just completely empty  doesn't work, because it's filtering based on value, and nothing matches the empty value.</p>
  <p>Any Help or direction would be much appreciated!</p>