How to Remove Quoted Email Text from Outlook Replies in Jira Data Center

Summary

When replying to a received HTML format notification from an issue, the old reply data does not strip out properly when using Outlook as the email client.

For the Incoming Mail Handler, the "stripquotes=true" option does not strip the old reply data properly when using Outlook. This is due to JRASERVER-14543 - Better support for reply emails from Outlook by mail handlers.

Solution

Deploying Velocity Templates without a Restart

In a development instance, you can play with picking up velocity file changes without a restart. From <jira-install>/atlassian-jira/WEB-INF/classes/velocity.properties:

1. Uncomment (remove the # sign) from

2. Uncomment (remove the # sign) from

   #velocimacro.library.autoreload=true

   to

   velocimacro.library.autoreload=true

3. Restart Jira for the changes in velocity.properties to take effect. After this, you can deploy velocity template changes without a restart.

Applying the change in the templates:

1. Log in as a user with the JIRA Administrators global permission.

2. Choose > System. Select Mail > Incoming Mail to open the Incoming Mail page. Keyboard shortcut: g + g + start typing incoming mail

3. Edit the Mail Handler.

4. The Handler dropdown menu has several options:

   • Method 1: The method below will only trim everything below the "---- Original Message ----" using the mail handler 'Create a new issue or add a comment to an existing issue'. This method can be used with mail handler: 'Create a new issue or add a comment to an existing issue'

     • Open the file: <install directory>\atlassian-jira\WEB-INF\classes\templates\email\html\includes\header.vm

     • Add this line just after the <html*> tag at the beginning of the file:

       <span style="display:none">---- Original Message ----</span>

     • In the handler configuration, set the Strip Quotes option to be true.

   • Method 2: The method below will trim anything below the line "---- Original Message ----" using the mail handler 'Add a comment before a specified marker or separator in the email body'.

     • Open the file: <install directory>\atlassian-jira\WEB-INF\classes\templates\email\html\includes\header.vm

     • Add this line at the end of file:

       <span style="display:none">---- Original Message ----</span>

     • Add this parameter line to the Split Regex field:

       • Using Regex Comment Handler

         splitregex=/-+\s*Original Message\s*-+/

   • Method 3: The method below will strip anything after "From: " in a reply message, using the mail handler 'Add a comment before a specified marker or separator in the email body'.

     • Add this parameter line to the 'Split Regex' field:

       /From: |> /

     • Alternative; for example split after both "From: " or a signature like "Sent from my iPhone", use the following parameter in the 'Split Regex' field:

       /From: |> /|Sent\sfrom\smy\siPhone

       This method can be used with the mail handler: 'Add a comment before a specified marker or separator in the email body'

   • Method 4: The method will strip anything after "From:" in using the mail handler 'Create a new issue or add a comment to an existing issue'.

     • Add this parameter line to $JIRA_INSTALL\atlassian-jira\WEB-INF\classes\outlook-email.translations

       From:

     • In the handler configuration, set the Strip Quotes option to be true.

   • Method 5: The method will use a broader regular expression to catch content, using the mail handler 'Add a comment before a specified marker or separator in the email body'.

     • Add this line to the 'Split Regex' field:

       /From: *|___.*|On .*wrote:|----Orig.*|On .*(JIRA).*/

For further tips regarding other workarounds take a look at the comments below.