Answers.Body: <p>It's not a problem for every field, although if you want emoji support then it matters for a different reason (and you would want utf8mb4_unicode_ci everywhere, except some special-purpose fields which are BINARY, e.g. utf8mb4_bin).</p>
  <p>You could try the api explorer System.utf8conversion action, which will try to convert tables to utf8mb4, but note it doesn't have any knowledge of extension's tables. Also if the database is big it might time out doing it through the UI, but you said you don't have <code>cv</code>.</p>
  <ol start="0">
  <li>Make a backup.</li>
  <li>Go to civicrm/api3</li>
  <li>For entity choose system</li>
  <li>For action choose utf8conversion.</li>
  <li>Leave the defaults.</li>
  <li>Click execute.</li>
  </ol>
  <p>To do extension's tables you can run it again and for the parameter <code>CSV list of table patterns</code> give it the list of the tables created by the extension.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2022-01-20T18:54:00.877Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2022-01-20T18:54:00.877Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Demerit
Body: <p>I just stumbled upon <a href="https://civicrm.stackexchange.com/q/24324/354">this problem</a>, which was due to fields in some tables having conflicting collations. Thanks to the answer to that question I solved our immediate problem.</p>
  <p>But looking around I see a lot of fields in a lot of tables have differing collations. Should I fix all those too, or does that create a risk for other problems?</p>
  <p>If I should &quot;reset&quot; all collations, is there a simple way to do that with all fields in all tables without <code>cv</code> (which we currently don't have)?</p>
  
Tags: <database><datatablescollation>
Title: Do I need to change our database collations?
ThreadText: # Do I need to change our database collations?
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2022-01-20)
  
  I just stumbled upon [this problem](https://civicrm.stackexchange.com/q/24324/354), which was due to fields in some tables having conflicting collations. Thanks to the answer to that question I solved our immediate problem.
  
  But looking around I see a lot of fields in a lot of tables have differing collations. Should I fix all those too, or does that create a risk for other problems?
  
  If I should "reset" all collations, is there a simple way to do that with all fields in all tables without `cv` (which we currently don't have)?
  
  **Tags:** database, datatablescollation
  
  
  ---
  
  ## 1 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_1 on 2022-01-20. Score: 4
  
  It's not a problem for every field, although if you want emoji support then it matters for a different reason (and you would want utf8mb4\_unicode\_ci everywhere, except some special-purpose fields which are BINARY, e.g. utf8mb4\_bin).
  
  You could try the api explorer System.utf8conversion action, which will try to convert tables to utf8mb4, but note it doesn't have any knowledge of extension's tables. Also if the database is big it might time out doing it through the UI, but you said you don't have `cv`.
  
  0. Make a backup.
  1. Go to civicrm/api3
  2. For entity choose system
  3. For action choose utf8conversion.
  4. Leave the defaults.
  5. Click execute.
  
  To do extension's tables you can run it again and for the parameter `CSV list of table patterns` give it the list of the tables created by the extension.
  
  
  ---
  
  