Configuring Character Encoding

Confluence and your database must be configured to use the same character encoding. To avoid problems with character encoding always set all character encodings to UTF-8 (or the equivalent for your database, for example, UTF8MB4 for MySQL databases, or AL32UTF8 for Oracle databases).


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Configuring Confluence character encoding

By default, Confluence uses UTF-8 character encoding.

While it is possible to change the character encoding, it is not recommended. Changing the Confluence character encoding will change your HTTP request and response encoding and your filesystem encoding as used by exports and Velocity templates. You may also be prevented from restarting or upgrading Confluence, depending on your database.

To change the Confluence character encoding (not recommended):

  1. Shut down Confluence and perform a database backup

  2. Run: 

    UPDATE  BANDANA set BANDANAVALUE = REPLACE(BANDANAVALUE, 'UTF-8', 'UTF-16') where BANDANAKEY = 'atlassian.confluence.settings';
  3. Verify: 

    SELECT BANDANAVALUE FROM BANDANA where BANDANAKEY = 'atlassian.confluence.settings';
  4. Start Confluence

Database character encoding

Your database, and the JDBC connection to it, must be configured to use UTF-8 (or the equivalent for your database, for example, UTF8MB4 for MySQL databases, or AL32UTF8 for Oracle databases). There are a number of checks in place to warn you if your database character encoding is incorrect. 

See Configuring Database Character Encoding for more information. 

Problems with character encodings

See Troubleshooting Character Encodings to find out how to test your character encoding. 

Last modified on Dec 7, 2023

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