The purpose of this document is to outline existing limitations in the conversion mechanism between Rich Text in Jira and HTML in Azure DevOps.

There are 3 main groups of known limiting factors of said conversion

1. Nonexistent styling in Jira - some styles possible in HTML are just not possible in Jira. Those limitations are not likely going away.

2. REST API limitations. - We use REST API to communicate both with Jira and Azure DevOps. Sometimes this means of communication is having fewer options than live editing. Those limitations might be fixed by changes in Jira and ADO REST API. We have little influence over it.

3. TFS4JIRA internal conversion limitations. The sheer amount of combinations of tags can create corner cases that are badly handled by our internal mechanism. This list is constantly being built and updated as we add new fixes.

As with any known limitation list, it’s never fully complete. If you happen to encounter any problem while synchronizing the HTML field to the Jira Rich text field that is not listed here, please do let us know here: Support portal

Due to the nature of sync, whenever Synchronizer encounters one unsupported formatting it can break another formatting as well. A notable example here ordered and unordered lists.

This styling, formatting, and objects will be lost during synchronization and will not be preserved while synchronizing back. There is no way for us at the moment to simulate them in Jira.

Those limitations are imposed by what Atlassian API has exposed and until there are changes in REST API we cannot change anything on our end.

This list includes only formatting supported by the native Azure DevOps editor. Custom formats taken from copying value cannot be listed here as simply put there are too many of them. Notable examples are:

1. Underline in other colors than black

2. Non-breaking space (very common)