Can I override inline !important?

Question

If you have

<div style="display: none !important;"></div>

Is there a way to override that in the style sheet to make it displayed?

Preferably using something similar to this:

div { display: block !important; }

Etz

For overriding the display: block !important, visibility: hidden; will work. Anyway, not related to the question. But thought to share. – Theall

Answer 1

Let me begin by saying that generally inline styles can be overridden:

.override {color:red !important;}

<p style="color:blue;">I will be blue</p>
<p style="color:blue;" class="override">But I will be red</p>

This behavior is described in W3 specs, where it is stated that !important declarations do not alter the specificity, but rather take precedence over "normal" declarations.

That being said, when conflicting rules both have the !important flag, specificity dictates that an inline rule is applied - meaning that for OP's scenario, there's no way to override an inline !important.

Wiener

The OP clearly states inline !important - please read properly! Nonetheless +1 for good answer. – Bunyip

@Christoph: but the answers just as clearly state "you can not override inline CSS", "inline has higher precedence"... That's wrong hence the original phrasing of my answer. I don't expect everyone to edit their answers to correct the mistake – Wiener

Your answer says nothing about overriding !important inline styles. The question asks about overriding !important inline styles only. – Marta

@BoltClock: well, I do say there's no way to override an inline important (except w/user styles, but that's outside of OP's control). I'm concerned about the phrasing used in other answers suggesting that a vanilla inline rule cannot be overridden. – Wiener

The last sentece is not quite correct. If the users browser has a custom css rule with !important that overrides even inline css rules with !important. So the only way is to have a custom css rule in the browser with !important for that specific (type of) element. – Aircraftman

Answer 2

You cannot override inline CSS if it has !important. It has higher precedence than the style in your external CSS file.

However, if you want it to change some actions later on, you can use a bit of JavaScript.

Phosphoprotein

Cannot use javascript, it's for emails. – Etz

Answer 3

You can not override inline CSS having !important, because it has higher precedence, but, using JavaScript, you can achieve what you want.

Feinstein

Ahh brilliant, so I don't need to inline important because whatever I inline will take over the classes. Good! – Serrulation

Answer 4

You cannot override inline style having !important. First preference is inline style.

For eg: we have a class

.styleT{float:left;padding-left:4px;width:90px;}

and in jsp

<div class="styleT" id="inputT" style="padding-left:0px;">

here doesn't take the padding-left:4px; .It takes class styleT except the padding-left:4px;. There will be padding-left:0px;.

Isola

Answer 5

Here is a simple jQuery solution.

$(document).ready(function() { 
$('div').css('display','block');
})

Halftimbered

Answer 6

You can see this example! There are several rules for CSS selector. The strongest selector is inline (if same level with/without !important). Next ones: id, class, etc. So if a tag is already stylized by inline css with !important, you just have a way: use Javascript to change.

var pid = document.getElementById('pid');
var button = document.getElementById('button');
button.addEventListener('click', function(){
  pid.style.color = '';
});

p{color:violet !important;}

*{color:blue !important;}

html *{color:brown !important;}

html p{color:lighblue !important;}

.pclass{color:yellow !important;}

#pid{color:green !important;}

<p class="pclass" id="pid" style="color:red !important;">
Hello, stylize for me !
</p>

<button id='button'>Change color by JS</button>

As you see, the style by inline css was removed and the id is the strongest selector now !

Cardiff

Answer 7

Precedence rules when two CSS properties apply to the same node:

• !important beats not-!important. If equally !important, ...

• style attribute beats css in a file. If both are in css files...

• an ID in the CSS selector beats no ID. And more IDs beat less. (and you thought there was no reason for two IDs in a selector.) If same ID count...

• Classes, or attributes like [name] in the selector, count them; more beats less. If all those are the same...

• tag names like span or input, more beats less.

So you see the inline !important is the highest precedence.

Eaglet

Answer 8

You can't override it in a style sheet. JS will help in your case. For example, the querySelector() method. Place the script line below the block div.

<div style="display: none !important;">Your div display block</div>

<script>
document.querySelector('[style="display: none !important;"]').style.display="block";
</script>

Schober