Why won't my custom PDF CSS override the default settings?

[Phil Gochenour]

Since implementing Confluence 4.3 for my company last year, I've been struggling to output professional quality customer documentation from it. First there was a bug with the excerpt macro output, which I raised here, and then I spent a day with our CSS guru trying to create a custom CSS, only to discover that we weren't able to override the default settings. Today I set up K15 Software's PDF Exporter plugin, created a template for the space, output some topics and, once again, none of my changes were in the PDF output. I also tried to implement a CSS workaround for the excerpt formatting problem described in this JIRA bug, but that didn't work either. I'm really at my wit's end in trying to resolve this, as I don't know if the cause is user error on my part, or there is something wrong with the default CSS override in Confluence 4.3. I *really* need to be able to output customer documentation from our product documentation space, so any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

[Phil Gochenour · Accepted solution]

And the answer is: I had to enable Custom Stylesheets for Spaces in Confluence Admin > Security Configuration. It would be extremely helpful if this had been included in the Help Tips box on the PDF Stylesheet page for my space, or had been mentioned anywhere in the https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Customising+Exports+to+PDF topic. Instead I found it in this topic: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Styling+Confluence+with+CSS.

[Steffen Heller]

Can you give a little more information in what way your custom PDF CSS does not override the default settings? What did you do exactly? Can you post the parts of your stylesheet that do not work as expected?

Otherwise all I can say is that for me it works as expected and I can't replicate your problem.

[Phil Gochenour]

Linked to wrong JIRA bug: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-27191