Omit html from message field in report?

Hi,

  We are trying to include the "Memo" or "Message" field from an event on a customised version of the "Sales Activity by Sales Rep" Detail report. 

  This works fine when only unformatted text has been entered into the message field.  However, our users frequently 'copy & paste' from elsewhere &/or use the text editing/formatting available on this field. The html associated with this is also included on the report - in some cases making the message/memo completely unreadable.

  Has anyone encountered (& overcome) this problem?  Or any ideas for a solution?

  Ideally we'd like to retain data entry into the 'message' field (to retain the "show Activity" functionality, because of course you can't customise what's shown......) but we have investigated using a custom long text or rich text field. Although for both we're OK with respect to omitting the html on the report the field is truncated (to a relatively short length) making this an unworkable solution!