Comments are replaced by hyphens

[hhasan]

Hi,

My Jira comments are being replaced by hyphens in Excel.

So if the comment was "I am looking into the issue" in Jira. It appears like this in Excel:

Hadeel Hasan   Date/time

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[Petru Simion _Simitech Ltd__ · Accepted solution]

Hi @hhasan , 

That usually happens when comments are exported through tools that don’t handle Jira’s rich-text / formatting properly, so Excel ends up showing placeholders (like hyphens) instead of the actual content.

If you’re using a third-party app or a custom export, the issue is almost always in how comments are parsed and written to CSV.

If your goal is to reliably extract Jira comments into Excel, especially when you need to:

• search for specific text inside comments

• limit results to specific issues or projects

• filter by author or date

• export the actual comment content cleanly to CSV

you might want to look at Advanced Comment Search for Jira. Our team built it specifically for searching and exporting comments, and the CSV export preserves the comment text so it opens correctly in Excel without being replaced by hyphens.

That said, if you share how you’re currently exporting (built-in Jira export vs. app vs️️ vs. API), it’ll be easier to pinpoint exactly where things are breaking.

Regards, 

Petru

[hhasan]

Thanks Petru. I will see the "Advanced Comment Search for Jira". The thing is this has started to happen recently. I don't know what changed. We run the Jira report, hit Export and open the downloaded file in Excel and that would be it. Comments would be there instead of showing only as "-------".

[Petru Simion _Simitech Ltd__]

Hi @hhasan ,

Based on what you described, this isn’t related to Excel and it’s not something you changed.

In Jira Cloud, comments are stored as rich text. When you export certain built-in reports to CSV/Excel, Jira has to convert that rich text into plain text. In some reports, that conversion doesn’t always happen consistently, and when the exporter can’t render the comment content, it may output placeholders (such as lines of hyphens) instead of the text.

That would explain why:

• the export workflow hasn’t changed on your side

• comments used to appear correctly

• and the issue started happening recently

At this point there isn’t much you can adjust in Excel to fix it, since the placeholders are already present in the exported file. If comments are required on a daily basis, the practical options are:

• raising an Atlassian support ticket to confirm whether this is a known limitation or recent change in that report/export

• or using an export method that explicitly converts Jira comments to plain text before writing the CSV

Hopefully this clarifies why you’re seeing this behavior and why it appeared without any local changes.

Regards,
Petru

[hhasan]

Thank you Petru!

[Natalia_Kovalchuk_SaaSJet_]

Hi, @hhasan!

This could happen because of how Jira exports comments. I suppose Jira doesn’t always export the full comment text and instead shows hyphens as placeholders. It’s especially common with longer or formatted comments, which Jira’s CSV/Excel export doesn’t handle very well.

In such cases, I recommend using Issue History for Jira (Work Item History) by SaaSJet. This app tracks all comment changes and lets you export work items with full comment history to Excel or CSV in seconds, which is helpful when you need readable data or an audit trail.

Hope this will be helpful!

[hhasan]

Hi Natalia

I will try this. Thank you!

[Aron Gombas _Midori_]

@hhasan What language or character set are you using? The symptom suggests that it may be a problem related to those...

You can use the Better Excel Exporter to export comments with your selected fields or all non-empty fields:

... to Excel:

It will export comments correctly, written in any language or character set.

(Discl. it is a paid and supported app developed by our team. Free for 10 users.)

[hhasan]

Hi Aron,

I am confused as to why I'd need to use the  Better Excel Exporter when comments used to be imported to Excel just fine. I will have to ask my manager if they are willing to use this tool. Thank you for your help.

[Aron Gombas _Midori_]

If you can fix the problem, keep your current tool and happy with it, then you do not need an additional app. I agree with that.

I thought if you needed a quick solution to your use case, then using an alternative app that "just works" is a viable option. (If it is a one-time export, you can install our app, export your comments, then uninstall the app.)

[hhasan]

Unfortunately, this is needed on a daily basis. Comments used to be displayed just fine in Excel then all of a sudden they are not. I do not know what happened/changed.

[John Funk]

Hi Hadeel,

How are you getting your comments from Jira to Excel? What are the exact steps? Are you using a third party app? 

[hhasan]

Hi John,

I select Reports and Timesheets, select the report, (it then automatically runs in the background), hit Export then open the downloaded file in Excel.

[John Funk]

Is that from a third party app? 

[hhasan]

These are steps are in Jira itself.