Configuring Database Character Encoding
Confluence and your database must be configured to use the same character encoding.
Confluence uses UTF-8 character encoding, so your database will also need to be configured to use UTF-8 (or the equivalent for your database, for example, AL32UTF8 for Oracle databases).
On this page:
Related pages:
New installations
When installing Confluence for the first time you will need to consider character encoding:
- when creating your database
- when connecting to the database via a JDBC connection string or datasource (if you use the simple setup method in the Confluence setup wizard, we'll take care of this for you).
The Confluence setup wizard will alert you if there is a problem with your character encoding, this will make sure you don't experience problems down the track. It is much easier to solve problems now, than later when you have Confluence data in your database.
The setup guide for each of our supported databases outlines how to configure character encoding correctly when creating your database:
- Database Setup for PostgreSQL
- Database Setup For MySQL
- Database Setup for SQL Server
- Database Setup for Oracle
Existing installations
For existing Confluence sites, where the first version of Confluence installed was 6.4 or earlier, we many not have checked the collation or character encoding of your database during the initial setup.
If your database is not correctly configured to use UTF-8 character encoding (or the equivalent for your database, for example AL32UTF8 for Oracle databases):
- you may see a health check warning while using Confluence
- you may not be able to start Confluence after an upgrade.
If this happens, you'll need to change the character encoding for your existing database. The way you do this will depend on your database.
Also see Troubleshooting Character Encodings for help diagnosing character encoding problems.
MySQL
See How to Fix the Collation and Character Set of a MySQL Database manually for details of what you'll need to do to fix the character encoding in your database. You should also make sure the collation is correct.
Microsoft SQL Server
See How to fix the collation of a Microsoft SQL Server Confluence database for details of what you'll need to do to fix the character encoding in your database.
PostgreSQL
If you use PostgreSQL, the best option is to recreate your database.
See Database Setup for PostgreSQL for how to create your database using the correct character encoding, then follow the steps in Migrating to Another Database.
Oracle
If you use Oracle, the best option is to recreate your database.
See Database Setup for Oracle for how to create your database using the correct character encoding, then follow the steps in Migrating to Another Database.