How do I edit global CSS for links in my Confluence cloud instance?
Asked by Marc Thorson:

By default, links in the main content area of Confluence pages are differentiated by color alone, which is an accessibility bug. I'd like to update the CSS so that links in the main content area are underlined without having to edit each and every template and blueprint with a custom CSS macro. Surely, there must be a global CSS file that can be customized, but I can't seem to find it in my Confluence cloud instance. Please advise.


Answers:
author: Steven F Behnke
body: This is literally disabled in Confluence Cloud.

|               Feature                | Enabled in Cloud? |                                                                 ...                                                                  |
|--------------------------------------|-------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Look and feel * Layouts * Custom CSS | No                | As Confluence uses a custom theme, it is not possible to customize the layout. It is also not possible to style Confluence with CSS. |
| Custom HTML                          | No                |                                                                                                                                      |

<https://confluence.atlassian.com/confcloud/restricted-functions-in-confluence-cloud-734070955.html>

comments: author: Marc Thorson
body: Thanks for the quick response, Steven. Greatly appreciated. Not exactly the answer I was hoping for, but at least now I know why I couldn't find the needle in the haystack since the needle wasn't even there.

I'll submit a bug report for the accessibility problem so hopefully the default styling can get repaired by Atlassian.


author: Steven F Behnke
body: While I cannot possibly vouch for how long this workaround may be functional, this may be of interest --

* There's still the *Adaptavist Content Formatting Macros* add-on installed in the Confluence Cloud system. This add-on provides several *free* macros, one of which is is called *CSS Formatting macro*. This macro allows you to define arbitrary CSS in a page-macro.
* The Confluence Default Theme allows you to, in each Space Administration section, set *Header* , *Footer* , and *Sidebar* content in wikiformat.

Combining these two features (ie - stick a *css macro* in a space footer) could allow you to define **space-level** CSS styling -- Still not ideal but IMO this could be a comparable workaround.


author: Stephen Deutsch
body: There's also a global "Header, Footer, and Sidebar" section, so putting it there would probably apply it globally. Note that the syntax is like this:

```
{css}&lt;CSS code goes here&gt;{css}
```


author: Steven F Behnke
body: Gah! There's a global header, footer, sidebar?! Awesome! Thanks Stephan! I did not know that.


author: Dennis T
body: This does not work as of the current date. Error message: *com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.migration.exceptions.UnknownMacroMigrationException: The macro 'css' is unknown.*


author: Thomas King
body: \>A bit surprised that you can't do basic theme editing in confluence.

Amen, brother. Why would Atlassian turn off this necessary functionality in Cloud Confluence? Particularly since their default CSS is so awkward. Suddenly Cloud users don't need this? I doubt it.

I've wasted \*hours\* on this, because Atlassian says very clearly [HERE](https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/styling-confluence-with-css-166528400.html) that custom CSS functions? Why not add a note to the documentation that says that the feature has been disabled in Cloud? I hate when Atlassian wastes my time for no logical reason.

This kind of backward thinking is why we turned away from Confluence at my last job.

Hours wasted.


author: Dominic Jalsevac
body: A bit surprised that you can't do basic theme editing in confluence. I would love to just be able to change say font and colour for an H1 tag.


author: vinr
body: Still no solution to change even an H1 tag in 2020 ?


Tags: accessibility

cloud

confluence-cloud

css