How to convert control characters in MySQL from latin1 to UTF-8? While converting a database to UTF-8 I noticed a strange behavior regarding the control characters 0x80-0x9F. For example, 0x92 (right apostrophe) would not get converted to UTF-8 and truncate the rest of the content of a column, using this method:

CREATE TABLE `bar` (
 `content` text
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1

INSERT INTO bar VALUES (0x8081828384858687898A8B8C8D8E8F909192939495969798999A9B9C9D9E9F);
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.06 sec)

SELECT content FROM bar;
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| content                                                                         |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| €‚ƒ„…†‡‰Š‹ŒŽ‘’“”•–—˜™š›œžŸ                                                 |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.06 sec)

ALTER TABLE bar CHANGE content content TEXT CHARACTER SET UTF8;
Query OK, 1 row affected, 1 warning (0.06 sec)
Records: 1  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 1

SHOW WARNINGS;
+---------+------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Level   | Code | Message                                                                             |
+---------+------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Warning | 1366 | Incorrect string value: '\x80\x81\x82\x83\x84\x85...' for column 'content' at row 1 |
+---------+------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.06 sec)

SELECT * FROM bar;
+---------+
| content |
+---------+
|         |
+---------+
1 row in set (0.06 sec)


While normally, 0x80-0x9F wouldn't be allowed in Latin1, MySQL seems to handle it differently:


  MySQL's latin1 is the same as the Windows cp1252 character set. This means it is the same as the official ISO 8859-1 or IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) latin1, except that IANA latin1 treats the code points between 0x80 and 0x9f as “undefined,” whereas cp1252, and therefore MySQL's latin1, assign characters for those positions. [src]


But MySQL can't seem to convert the above range of values from its latin1 character set to its UTF-8 character set.

These characters are getting in my database from copy/pasting from a word document (cp1252), and while I might have found a way to have the application force the right UTF-8 values for new entries, I need to make sure the old get converted properly.

Is there a way within MySQL that I'm missing to convert these to the UTF-8 equivalent without going through each row of each text column and replacing them with an ASCII-friendly version?
I'm not certain.  I tried to start out be reproducing your problem but the alter worked fine for me.  

test &gt; CREATE TABLE `bar` (  `content` text ) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;  INSERT INTO bar VALUES (0x8081828384858687898A8B8C8D8E8F909192939495969798999A9B9C9D9E9F);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.02 sec)

Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

test &gt; ALTER TABLE bar CHANGE content content TEXT CHARACTER SET UTF8;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.04 sec)
Records: 1  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0

test &gt; select * from bar;
+---------------------------------+
| content                         |
+---------------------------------+
| ����������������������������� |
+---------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

test &gt; set names utf8;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

test &gt; select * from bar;
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| content                                                                         |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| €‚ƒ„…†‡‰Š‹ŒŽ‘’“”•–—˜™š›œžŸ |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)


Here's my related char settings

test &gt; show variables like '%char%';
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| Variable_name            | Value                      |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| character_set_client     | utf8                       |
| character_set_connection | utf8                       |
| character_set_database   | latin1                     |
| character_set_filesystem | binary                     |
| character_set_results    | utf8                       |
| character_set_server     | latin1                     |
| character_set_system     | utf8                       |
| character_sets_dir       | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+


Edit

My char settings before running set names utf8

test &gt; show variables like '%char%';
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| Variable_name            | Value                      |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| character_set_client     | latin1                     |
| character_set_connection | latin1                     |
| character_set_database   | latin1                     |
| character_set_filesystem | binary                     |
| character_set_results    | latin1                     |
| character_set_server     | latin1                     |
| character_set_system     | utf8                       |
| character_sets_dir       | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
8 rows in set (0.00 sec)


Version

test &gt; select version();
+-------------------------+
| version()               |
+-------------------------+
| 5.1.41-3ubuntu12.10-log |
+-------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)