How to remove HTML tags from Metadata description field

[David_Brooks]

When adding a description to a layer's metadata and publishing as a Map Service to Portal, the rest endpoint shows the HTML tags for the Description and makes it very difficult to read. Is there a way of removing these tags or converting the description field to a simple plain text box? This isn't the case for the summary field.

Otherwise, is there a better way of viewing individual layer metadata for a multi-layer map service other than via the rest endpoint?

[cbp-geus]

Brilliant! Thanks for it @David_Brooks. I'll try it out one day 😃

[CodyGarcia2]

Thank you for this information. I was able to add a description to a layer's metadata and publish it as a Map Service to Portal without HTML tags. Unfortunately now there is only a description on the service page. When I click on the service layer to look at the layer metadata, the description is blank. Can you let me know what might have happened?

[Jamie_Leitch_CNF]

This workaround does remove the html tags, however I noticed that the tags that were in the Item Description section are replaced with whatever was in the Place Keywords in the Topics & Keywords section.  Is there way to export/import the metadata while leaving the tags intact?  There doesn't seem to be an option to export metadata as ArcGIS format, only "Save As" Arcgis format.

[BrittanyBurson]

We have hundreds of services... maybe a thousand even... really don't want to need any workarounds. Anyone know if this is still an issue in Enterprise 11.x?

[MikeDolbow]

I upgraded to 11.3 this summer, and this is still happening to me, although only when I bulk deploy via a script. My script leverages MapServiceDraft and as it says near the top of that page:

If metadata properties (credits, description, summary, tags, and useLimitations) are not set or consist of empty strings, the map service will source metadata from the map. 

Which, seems strange to me, because the default option when overwriting from Pro is "Use the item description from the service".

I'm lucky I only have about 25 services, so it didn't take me long to go into Manager and manually remove the HTML tags from any section within the "Item Description" tab. And now if I keep the default when overwriting from Pro, I'll be fine. But it's kind of annoying to think that in a DR, bulk deployment scenario, I'm going to re-introduce those HTML tags. It'd be great to see this bug addressed either via future Server and/or Pro releases.