diff --git a/pmagpy/validate_upload3.py b/pmagpy/validate_upload3.py
index <HASH>..<HASH> 100644
--- a/pmagpy/validate_upload3.py
+++ b/pmagpy/validate_upload3.py
@@ -174,7 +174,7 @@ def cv(row, col_name, arg, current_data_model, df, con):
     cell_values = cell_value.split(":")
     cell_values = [c.strip() for c in cell_values]
     for value in cell_values:
-        if str(value).lower() in [str(v).lower() for v in vocabulary[col_name]]:
+        if str(value).lower() in [str(v.encode('utf-8')).lower() for v in vocabulary[col_name]]:
             continue
         elif value.lower() == "none":
             continue
deal appropriately with unicode encoding errors with non utf-8 characters in controlled vocabularies