From: Mark Phillips Date: September 24 2012 11:28pm Subject: Need Help Converting Character Sets List-Archive: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql/228265 Message-Id: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=f46d0401678b11bb2804ca7af21d --f46d0401678b11bb2804ca7af21d Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I have a table, Articles, of news articles (in English) with three text columns for the intro, body, and caption. The data came from a web page, and the content was cut and pasted from other sources. I am finding that there are some non utf-8 characters in these three text columns. I would like to (1) convert these text fields to be strict utf-8 and then (2) fix the input page to keep all new submissions utf-8. 91) For the first step, fixing the current database, I tried: update Articles set body =3D CONVERT(body USING ASCII); However, when I checked one of the articles I found an apostrophe had been converted into a question mark. (FWIW, the apostrophe was one of those offending non utf-8 characters): Before conversion: "I stepped into the observatory=92s control room ..." After conversion: "I stepped into the observatory?s control room..." Is there a better way to accomplish my first goal, without reading each article and manually making the changes? (2) For the second goal, insuring that all future articles are utf-8, do I need to change the table structure or the insert query to insure I get the correct utf-8 characters into the database? Thanks, Mark --f46d0401678b11bb2804ca7af21d--