Problem

Often users may have problems with certain characters in an instance. Symptoms may include:

  • Non-ASCII characters appearing as question marks (?)
  • Page links with non-ASCII characters not working
  • Single characters being displayed as two characters
  • Garbled text appearing

Resolution

Atlassian recommends UTF-8 or Unicode encoding, and case-insensitive collation. In most cases, problems are due to a misconfiguration in one of the components.

Ensure the same encoding is used across all components

The UTF-8 character encoding should be used across the database, application server and web application.

Requesting support

If there are still problems with character encoding after following the above steps, create a support request, and our support staff will aid in solving your problem.

Entering in the following details will help us to identify your problem:

  • Attach screenshots of the problem.
  • Generate a Support Zip and attach it to the ticket.
  • Copy the contents of the System Information page into the 'Description' field.