How do I edit global CSS for links in my Confluence cloud instance?

[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.

[Steven F Behnke · Accepted solution]

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

[Marc Thorson]

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.

[Steven F Behnke]

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.

[Stephen Deutsch]

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}
<CSS code goes here>
{css}

[Steven F Behnke]

Gah! There's a global header, footer, sidebar?! Awesome! Thanks Stephan! I did not know that.

[Dennis T]

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.

[Thomas King]

>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 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.

[Dominic Jalsevac]

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. 

[vinr]

Still no solution to change even an H1 tag in 2020 ?