Special Character Limitations

Special Character Limitations

Limitations on special characters are very frustrating! We do some manual exporting via Reports and depend on some special characters. We lost some data as a result of these limitations. Editing an account that has a special character in the Description field, returns an error AND all the edits are lost. Characters were automatically removed from custom pick list items. While I am not a programmer, I question whether special characters are really that difficult to deal with? Is there any way this can be improved?

Thanks,
Tim