External a href content in a link is missing after editing a document.

[Jim Dryden]

After migrating my confluence server to atlassian Cloud, a user reports that editing and publishing a page containing external links results in the link be removed. Here is an example of the link markup (url partially redacted) prior to publish:

<a class="external-link" href="https://XXXXX.sharepoint.com/tXXXs/it/at/LXXXMS/CaXXXX/CXXXXl/_layouts/15/Doc.aspx?sourcedoc={6d92ef04-4360-4279-a9f5XXXX0f68}&amp;action=edit&amp;wd=target%28X%20X.X%7XXX-XXX%2F%29&amp;wdorigin=NavigationUrl" rel="nofollow">shared account audit list</a>

Here is the markup after publish:

<a rel="nofollow">shared account audit list</a>

So the href and class are stripped from the anchor tag. User states that this was not a problem prior to cloud migration.

[Brant Schroeder]

@Jim Dryden If they add a link via the smart links everything should be fine.  I would suggest giving that a try - https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/insert-links-and-anchors/