Is there a way to limit special characters in the issue summary?

Question

We export data from our JIRA instance, and there have been some issues with special characters existing in the issue summary that other applications are not able to handle.  Is there a way to put edits on the summary field to allow/disallow special characters.  We had issues with 'em-dash' and 'en-dash' at one point, and we also had issues with the user just happening to put '; ;' in the summary, which another application happened to be using to parse the incoming file with, creating a bad load of data to the other application.

CLINTON E. SMITH · Answer

JIRA Server is what we use.

Bulk remove is a fine solution, I'm just not certain how to go about removing them without knowing exactly what it may be they would be using.

Maarten Cautreels · Answer

Hi Clinton,

There's definitely a way to limit the kind of characters a user can put into the summary field. The solution might be different for Cloud compared to Server so I'd like to ask on which version you are working?!

On the other hand I do have a thought whether it's a good idea to limit the possibilities for a user because another system has a problem with it. It might be a better and easier solution to just bulk-remove these characters from the export before importing it in the other system. (Or get the other system fixed so it does work with these special characters).

Hope this helps.

Best,

Maarten