title: List of 'messed up characters' in utf8
body: <p>one of my clients has a website which has been totally messed up by the hosting companie forcing a characterset on the complete database. We've had troubles before with character sets but now it's just straight forward a drama!</p>
  
  <p>So far I've added the charset=utf-8 to the page content type and set the charset for the mysql connection to utf8. And now it's time to replace all characters. So far what I've found is:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Ã¶ = ö
  Ã« = ë
  Ã© = é
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The data inside the database is being updated like so:</p>
  
  <pre><code>UPDATE table SET `fieldname` = REPLACE(`fieldname`, 'Ã¶', 'ö');
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Now I just need to find a complete list of alle characters that are messed up. I tried a MySQL query searching for <code>field LIKE '%Ã%'</code> but this returns me all records inside the database.</p>
  
  <p>Google also just displays a couple of characters (mostly the 3 above) in some topics of other people that have had troubles, however it seems there's nowhere a complete list of these characters (or at least the most common) which I can use to find and replace all data for my client.</p>
  
  <p>If anyone perhaps knows such location or is able to complete my list I will, in return, create a page containing these characters to help others (unless there's a list already which I'm not aware of somewhere ofcourse).</p>
  
  <p>// <code>EDIT</code>: </p>
  
  <p>it would be for the most common european characters such as é è ë, á à ä, ö ó ò, ï, ü and perhaps the ringel-S (German double S). Not so much for the spaning signs like ñ or ã, but if they are in a list somewhere that would be much appreciated aswel.</p>
  
  <p>// <code>EDIT 2</code>:</p>
  
  <p>I updated the MySQL database and tables using the 2 ALTER queries from the 1st part of this article: <code>http://developer.loftdigital.com/blog/php-utf-8-cheatsheet</code>. I DID NOT make use of the mb_ functions so far and didn't do any MB configuration as it seems.</p>
  
  <p>The headers are all set to utf-8 in the files (I still have to check the headers for some ajax scripts tho, not sure if that's needed but it won't be harmfull doing so). And the files are all saved as UTF8 without BOM. Also PHPFreakMailer is updated by setting the charset to utf-8.</p>
  
  <p><code>Bad enough</code>, I'm still having these weird characters. I wasn't thinking they'd go away by theirself, but at least it was worth hoping so :-) So what's the final step I should take? Continuïng using the REPLACE query and changing all wierd characters manually?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance!</p>