Context. The CoRoT mission is in its third year of observation and the data from the second long run in the galactic centre direction are being analysed. The solar-like oscillating stars that have been observed up to now have given some interesting results, specially concerning the amplitudes that are lower than predicted. We present here the results from the analysis of the star HD 170987. Aims: The goal of this research work is to characterise the global parameters of HD 170987. We look for global seismic parameters such as the mean large separation, maximum amplitude of the modes, and surface rotation because the signal-to-noise ratio in the observations does not allow us to measure individual modes. We also aim to retrieve the parameters of the star and its chemical composition. Methods: We studied the chemical composition of the star through ground-based observations performed with the NARVAL spectrograph. We used several methods to calculate the global parameters from the acoustic oscillations based on CoRoT data. The light curve of the star has been interpolated with inpainting algorithms to reduce the effect of data gaps. Results: We found the power excess related to p modes in the range [400-1200] μHz with a mean large separation of 55.2 ± 0.8 μHz with a probability above 95 % that increases to 55.9 ± 0.2 μHz in a higher frequency range [500-1250] μHz and a rejection level of 1%. A hint of the variation of this quantity with frequency was also found. The rotation period of the star is estimated to be around 4.3 days with an inclination axis of i = 50° +20-13. We measured a bolometric amplitude per radial mode in a range [2.4-2.9] ppm around 1000 μHz. Finally we estimate the stellar mass with a grid of models, M = 1.43 ± 0.05 M_&sun;, the radius, R = 1.96 ± 0.046 R_&sun;, and the age ~2.4 Gyr. The CoRoT space mission, launched on 2006 December 27, has been developed and is operated by CNES, with the contribution of Austria, Belgium, Brazil, ESA (RSSD and Science Programme), Germany and Spain.