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This article describes how to use phpMyAdmin to change the collation settings for MySQL databases and tables.

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About character sets and collation

MySQL enables you to store and process data in a wide variety of languages using various character sets. For some operations, such as comparing two strings, MySQL uses a set of rules to determine equality and sorting order. This set of rules is known as a collation. You may have to change the collation for a database or table based on the character set you want to use for string data. You can do this by using the phpMyAdmin tool in cPanel.

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Changing the default collation for a database

To change the default collation for a database, follow these steps:
  1. Log in to cPanel.
    📘 Note If you do not know how to log in to your cPanel account, please see this article.
  2. On the Tools page, in the Databases section, click phpMyAdmin:
  3. The phpMyAdmin administration page appears in a new window. In the left pane, click the name of the database you want to modify.
  4. On the top menu bar, click Operations.
  5. Under Collation, select the collation that you want for the database, and then click Go.
    🚧 Important This setting only affects new tables that you create. Any existing tables maintain their current collation setting.

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Changing the collation for a table

To change the collation for a database table, follow these steps:
  1. Log in to cPanel.
    📘 Note If you do not know how to log in to your cPanel account, please see this article.
  2. On the Tools page, in the Databases section, click phpMyAdmin:
  3. The phpMyAdmin administration page appears in a new window. In the left pane, click the + icon next to the name of the database that contains the table you want to modify. phpMyAdmin expands the view to show the database’s tables.
  4. Click the name of the table you want to modify.
  5. On the top menu bar, click Operations.
  6. Under Table options, in the Collation list box, select the collation that you want for the table, and then click Go.

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More information

For more information about character sets and collation in MySQL, please visit https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/charset-general.html.