How to Fix Character Encoding Issues

Last updated: February 8, 2026 | Reading time: 12 minutes

Character encoding problems can turn perfectly good text into unreadable gibberish. Whether you're dealing with garbled Chinese characters in Excel, broken Japanese text on a website, or mysterious symbols in your database, this guide will help you fix it.

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Understanding the Problem

Character encoding issues occur when text is saved in one encoding but read in another. It's like writing a letter in Spanish but someone tries to read it assuming it's French—the words don't make sense.

Common Symptoms:

Chinese characters show as: ÄãºÃ or 锟斤拷
Smart quotes appear as: â€™ or â€œ
Japanese text shows as: æ—¥æœ¬èªž
Question marks or boxes: ??? or □□□
Random accented letters where they shouldn't be

Fix #1: Text Files and Documents

1Open in a Text Editor with Encoding Support

Use editors like Notepad++, VS Code, or Sublime Text that let you change encoding.

2Try Different Encodings

In the editor menu, look for "Encoding" or "Character Set" and try:

UTF-8 (try first—most common)
GBK or GB18030 (for Chinese)
Big5 (for Traditional Chinese)
Shift-JIS (for Japanese)
EUC-KR (for Korean)
Windows-1252 (Western European)

3Save as UTF-8

Once you find the encoding that displays text correctly, immediately save the file as UTF-8 to prevent future issues.

Fix #2: Excel and CSV Files

Excel often causes encoding issues with Chinese, Japanese, or special characters.

Opening a Garbled CSV in Excel:

1Don't Double-Click the CSV

Opening directly can cause encoding issues.

2Import via Data Tab

Open Excel
Go to Data → Get Data → From File → From Text/CSV
Select your file
In the import dialog, change File Origin to:
- 65001: Unicode (UTF-8) for UTF-8 files
- 936: Chinese Simplified (GB2312) for GBK files
- 950: Chinese Traditional (Big5) for Big5 files
Click Load

Saving Excel to UTF-8 CSV:

File → Save As → CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) (*.csv)

⚠️ Warning: Regular "CSV (Comma delimited)" in Excel does NOT save as UTF-8. Always use "CSV UTF-8" if you have non-English characters.

Fix #3: Database Encoding Issues

MySQL / MariaDB

Check current encoding:

SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'character_set%';
SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'collation%';
        

Set database to UTF-8:

ALTER DATABASE your_database CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE your_table CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
        

In your connection string:

mysqli_set_charset($conn, "utf8mb4");
-- or in PDO:
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=test;charset=utf8mb4', $user, $pass);
        

💡 Tip: Use utf8mb4 (not just utf8) in MySQL. The utf8mb4 encoding supports full Unicode including emojis, while utf8 is incomplete.

PostgreSQL

-- Check encoding
SHOW SERVER_ENCODING;

-- Create database with UTF-8
CREATE DATABASE mydb ENCODING 'UTF8';
        

Fix #4: Website Encoding Issues

HTML Files

Add this in the <head> section:

<meta charset="UTF-8">

⚠️ Important: This meta tag must be within the first 1024 bytes of your HTML file. Place it as early as possible in the <head>.

HTTP Headers

Apache (.htaccess):

AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

Nginx:

charset utf-8;

PHP:

header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');

Fix #5: Email Encoding Problems

Emails with garbled subjects or body text usually have encoding issues in MIME headers.

Fixing Email Subject Lines:

Email subjects should be encoded using RFC 2047 format:

=?UTF-8?B?5L2g5aW977yB?=
// Decodes to: 你好！
        

If you see raw encoded text like this in your email subject, your email client isn't decoding it properly. Try a different email client or use our decoder tool.

PHP Mail Example:

$subject = "=?UTF-8?B?" . base64_encode($subject) . "?=";
$headers = "Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8\r\n";
mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
        

Fix #6: Programming Language Specifics

Python

# Reading files
with open('file.txt', 'r', encoding='utf-8') as f:
    content = f.read()

# Writing files
with open('output.txt', 'w', encoding='utf-8') as f:
    f.write(text)
        

JavaScript (Node.js)

const fs = require('fs');

// Reading
const text = fs.readFileSync('file.txt', 'utf8');

// Writing
fs.writeFileSync('output.txt', text, 'utf8');
        

Java

// Reading
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(
    new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream("file.txt"), StandardCharsets.UTF_8)
);

// Writing
BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(
    new OutputStreamWriter(new FileOutputStream("output.txt"), StandardCharsets.UTF_8)
);
        

Prevention Tips

✅ Best Practices:

Always use UTF-8 for new projects, files, and databases
Declare encoding explicitly in HTML, HTTP headers, and database connections
Test with international characters before going live
Use modern tools that default to UTF-8
Validate data entry to ensure proper encoding from the start

❌ Avoid:

Using Notepad (Windows) for non-English text—it often saves in wrong encoding
Assuming ASCII is enough—it only supports English
Copy-pasting between systems without checking encoding
Using charset=ISO-8859-1 or old encodings for new projects

Quick Diagnosis Flowchart

Q: Do you see â€™ or â€œ?

→ UTF-8 text displayed as Windows-1252. Fix: Decode as UTF-8.

Q: Do you see Chinese as ÄãºÃ?

→ GBK text displayed as Latin-1. Fix: Decode as GBK.

Q: Do you see ??? or □□□?

→ Original bytes lost during save. Cannot be recovered. Prevention only.

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