How do I disable link underlines in confluence 4.2?

[Brett Ryan]

I've just started down the path of 3.5 -> 4.2 and am having one heck of a time getting the migration going.

One that's bugging me is the underscores on all the page links. I can't figure out how to turn them off, and on the Atlassian wiki it does not appear to be on.

I can confirm that this is coming from CONF_INST/confluence/includes/css/wiki-content.css:125-129 with the following content:

.wiki-content a,
.wiki-content a:link,
.wiki-content a:visited {
    text-decoration: underline;
}

Now I could quite simply edit this stylesheet (and wiki-content-min.css) to correct this, though I'd like a proper solution that I don't have to remember to apply whenever I update Confluence.

I've tried overriding this style in the spaces stylesheet and the global stylesheet with no luck.

Confluence 4.x really is driving me up the wall.

[SarahA · Accepted solution]

Hallo Brett

Are you using the Documentation theme in your space? If so, then this bug is the cause of your problems:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-24543

To fix it, you can apply a CSS style via the Space Admin screen. You need System Administrator permissions, even though you're using the space admin screens. Choose 'Browse' > 'Space Admin', then click 'Stylesheet' in the left-hand menu (under 'Look and Feel'). Also note that this option may be disabled on your site. See the docs:

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Styling+Confluence+with+CSS

Once you've got the Stylesheet screen open, you can enter the folllowing CSS to remove the underlines (assuming you're using the Documentation theme):

.wiki-content a:link, .wiki-content a:visited, .wiki-content a:active {
    text-decoration: none;
}
 
.wiki-content a:hover {
    text-decoration: underline;
}

I hope this solves the problem!

Cheers, Sarah

[Brett Ryan]

Thanks Sarah, it appears this does resolve the issue though I'm not using the documentation theme, I did try this originally though it was seeminly ignored, I guess it must have been my browser cache.

With 61 spaces and counting this is a workaround rather than a solution as it would be a pain to maintain.

We already have just shy of 280 lines of CSS to each space which is becoming troublesome to maintain, this is just to make the spaces look "right".

[Brett Ryan]

Sarah, I've marked this as accepted as the work-around does work, however I'd like to see something applied properly to turn this on/off as confluence should not be underlining all links IMHO, if anything that should be something a site admin should be able to decide on without needing to update the CSS sheets each time an upgrade occurs.

[Darryl Lee]

Hi, is there a (reason I can't/a way that I can) make this change in the Theme's Stylesheet? We have a lot of Spaces and I don't want to hack Stylesheets for all of them.

[Brett Ryan]

It is annoying and frustrating, though no reason has been given to me. It's one of the painful points of performing a confluence upgrade that I must remember to go hack the stylesheets and hope that nothing else popped up (new classes etc).