you could try converting the contents of your DB to utf with iconv.
NOTE:
the text 'sketch@talkphp:~$' is my attempt at emulating the command line
Code:
sketch@talkphp:~$ mysqldump -u user -p databasename > databasename.sql
You may want to create a backup DB:
Code:
sketch@talkphp:~$ mysql -u username -p
mysql>create database databasename-backup;
mysql>exit
Bye
sketch@talkphp:~$ mysql -u username -p databasename-backup < databasename.sql
Now we can run the dump through iconv
Code:
sketch@talkphp:~$ iconv -f Latin1 -t utf8 databasename.sql > databasename-iconv.sql
Now create a new DB or reuse the old on and dump it back in (making sure that the tables and database are set to utf8):
Code:
sketch@talkphp:~$ mysql -u root -p databasename < databasename-iconv.sql
Sorry, i don't know how you would do this on redmond.
Alternitively you could try this fudge.
basically convert the column with the problem data in to a binary format then convert back the charset to utf8 again, this should force mysql to convert the data.
Code:
sketch@talkphp:~$ mysql -u root -p databasename
mysql>alter table tbl_name modify column col_name CHAR(255) CHARACTER SET binary;
mysql> alter table tbl_name modify column col_name CHAR(255) CHARACTER SET utf8;
obviously replace the 'CHAR(255)' with whatever the current data type is.
I haven't tested it, so you would be best advised to create a backup!