Encoding special characters in mySQL

Question

I am making a new development, and I have to use an existing mySQL database. The management is made with phpMyAdmin.

The problem is that there are stored several data with special chars like MarÃa . Is it possible to fix it in the database?

The database and tables was originally encoded as utf-8 and now it has been changed to latin1_spanish_ci .

Answer 1

Which phpMyAdmin version are you using? Recent versions try to change the collation for you (it shows a warning, but generally this conversion is relatively safe. The usual warnings about backups apply, of course).

When you tried to change the collation on the Structure page, you should have seen a notice like this:

If you don't see that on the Structure page, I suggest upgrading your phpMyAdmin. This feature was introduced in version 4.5.0, which was released in the fall of 2015.