622
votes

I am attempting to have a link show up in white, without an underline. The text color shows up correctly as white, but the blue underline is stubbornly persisting. I tried text-decoration: none; and text-decoration: none !important; in the CSS to remove the link underline. Neither worked.

.boxhead .otherPage {
  color: #FFFFFF;
  text-decoration: none;
}
<div class="boxhead">
  <h2>
    <span class="thisPage">Current Page</span>
    <a href="myLink"><span class="otherPage">Different Page</span></a>
  </h2>
</div>

How can I remove the blue underline from the link?

19
Well it should go away when you do text-decoration:none. Are you sure you are appling this to the right element? Can you provide example code?Davor Lucic
Where is text-decoration: none being used?shuttle87

19 Answers

867
votes

You are not applying text-decoration: none; to an anchor (.boxhead a) but to a span element (.boxhead).

Try this:

.boxhead a {
    color: #FFFFFF;
    text-decoration: none;
}
234
votes

The anchor tag (link) also has pseudo-classes such as visited, hover, link and active. Make sure your style is applied to the state(s) in question and that no other styles are conflicting.

For example:

a:hover, a:visited, a:link, a:active
{
    text-decoration: none;
}

See W3.org for more information on user action pseudo-classes :hover, :active, and :focus.

36
votes

text-decoration: none !important should remove it .. Are you sure there isn't a border-bottom: 1px solid lurking about? (Trace the computed style in Firebug/F12 in IE)

29
votes

Just add this attribute to your anchor tag

style="text-decoration:none;"

Example:

<a href="page.html"  style="text-decoration:none;"></a>

Or use the CSS way.

.classname a {
    color: #FFFFFF;
    text-decoration: none;
}
19
votes

Sometimes what you're seeing is a box shadow, not a text underline.

Try this (using whatever CSS selectors are appropriate for you):

a:hover, a:visited, a:link, a:active {

    text-decoration: none!important;

    -webkit-box-shadow: none!important;
    box-shadow: none!important;
}
14
votes

You missed text-decoration:none for the anchor tag. So code should be following.

.boxhead a {
    text-decoration: none;
}
<div class="boxhead">
    <h2>
        <span class="thisPage">Current Page</span>
        <a href="myLink"><span class="otherPage">Different Page</span></a>
    </h2>
</div>

More standard properties for text-decoration

enter image description here

10
votes

As a rule, if your "underline" is not the same color as your text [and the 'color:' is not overridden inline] it is not coming from "text-decoration:" It has to be "border-bottom:"

Don't forget to take the border off your pseudo classes too!

a, a:link, a:visited, a:active, a:hover {border:0!important;}

This snippet assumes its on an anchor, change to it's wrapper accordingly... and use specificity instead of "!important" after you track down the root cause.

9
votes

Without seeing the page, hard to speculate.

But it sounds to me like you may have a border-bottom: 1px solid blue; being applied. Perhaps add border: none;. text-decoration: none !important is right, it's possible that you have another style that is still overriding that CSS though.

This is where using the Firefox Web Developer Toolbar is awesome, you can edit the CSS right there and see if things work, at least for Firefox. It's under CSS > Edit CSS.

5
votes

While the other answers are correct, there is an easy way to get rid of the underline on all those pesky links:

a {
   text-decoration:none;
}

This will remove the underline from EVERY SINGLE LINK on your page!

2
votes

If text-decoration: none or border: 0 doesn't work, try applying inline style in your html.

2
votes
  a {
    color: unset;
    text-decoration: unset;
  }
2
votes

As others pointed out, it seems like you can't override nested text-decoration styles... BUT you can change the text-decoration-color.

As a hack, I changed the color to be transparent:

text-decoration-color: transparent;
1
votes

Just use the property

border:0;

and you are covered. Worked perfectly for me when text-decoration property dint work at all.

1
votes

You've used text-decoration none in the wrong selector. You need to check which tag do you need for decoration none.

You may use this code

.boxhead h2 a{text-decoration: none;}

OR

.boxhead a{text-decoration: none !important;}

OR

a{text-decoration: none !important;}
1
votes

None of the answers worked for me. In my case there was a standard

a:-webkit-any-link {
text-decoration: underline;

in my code. Basically whatever link it is, the text color goes blue, and the link stays whatever it is.

So I added the code at the end of the header like this:

<head>
  </style>
    a:-webkit-any-link {
      text-decoration: none;
    }
  </style>
</head>

and problem is no more.

0
votes

Here is an example for the asp.net webforms LinkButton control:

 <asp:LinkButton ID="lbmmr1" runat="server" ForeColor="Blue" />

Code behind:

 lbmmr1.Attributes.Add("style", "text-decoration: none;")
0
votes

Put the following HTML code before the <BODY> tag:

<STYLE>A {text-decoration: none;} </STYLE>

0
votes

In my case, I had poorly formed HTML. The link was within a <u> tag, and not a <ul> tag.

0
votes

set text-decoration: none; for anchor tag.

Example html.

<body>
    <ul class="nav-tabs">
        <li><a href="#"><i class="fas fa-th"></i>Business</a></li>
        <li><a href="#"><i class="fas fa-th"></i>Expertise</a></li>
        <li><a href="#"><i class="fas fa-th"></i>Quality</a></li>
    </ul>
</body>

Example CSS:

.nav-tabs li a{
  text-decoration: none;
}