# Special characters in columns are in wrong encoding

**URL:** <https://community.cdata.com/t/special-characters-in-columns-are-in-wrong-encoding/850>\
**Category:** CData Virtuality \[Archived\]\
**Tags:** article, cdata-virtuality\
**Created:** [July 12, 2024, 5:10pm UTC](https://community.cdata.com/t/special-characters-in-columns-are-in-wrong-encoding/850 "2024-07-12T17:10:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![anonymous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8491ac/32.png) [@anonymous](https://community.cdata.com/u/anonymous)\
**Post date:** [July 12, 2024, 5:10pm UTC](https://community.cdata.com/t/special-characters-in-columns-are-in-wrong-encoding/850/1 "2024-07-12T17:10:38Z")

</div>

Googles response from the server is in UTF-8 but some columns maintain their original charset, so your Umlauts or other special charaters will look defect ( e.g. campaignName).

To fix it, you can use TO\_CHARS and TO\_BYTES.

In Germany these columns are often encoded in windows-1252, so your view can be fixed like in this Example:

> `create view views.adwords_clicks_per_campaignAS select        adwords.customer_id.customerId        ,campaignId        ,CAST( TO_CHARS( TO_BYTES( "campaignName", 'windows-1252' ) , 'UTF-8' )  as string ) as "campaignName"        ,accountId        ,clicks    from        adwords.customer_id        ,table (            exec "adwords"."getCAMPAIGN_PERFORMANCE_REPORT" (                adwords.customer_id.customerId                ,'2013-01-01'                ,curdate (                )                ,'AccountId,Clicks,campaignId,campaignName'            )        ) a;;`