Unicode characters shown as question marks ("?????") in Jira
Platform Notice: Data Center Only - This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.
Note that this KB was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center KBs for non-Data-Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
Summary
Non-Latin characters are displayed as question marks instead of the actual characters.
Environment
Jira Server / Data Center (any version)
Microsoft SQL Server
Diagnosis
Identify the table associated with the place that displays the characters incorrectly. (see How to Identify Active Objects AO Tables in Jira Application Database) If you can not find it, please contact Atlassian Support to help with the identification.
Check if the characters in the affected table is stored in a column with the data type VARCHAR instead of NVARCHAR.
exec sp_columns TABLENAME
Cause
Data type VARCHAR is used instead of NVARCHAR, which is required for double byte Unicode characters with MS SQL Server is used with Jira.
Solution
If VARCHAR is used the SQL Server will return the characters as question marks back to Jira. This can not be corrected in the Jira application as it will not know what character the question mark represents. It has to be corrected on the database side.
Follow the Microsoft SQL Server documentation on how to change the data type of a column.
⚠️Modifying the data type of a column that already contains data can possibly result in the permanent loss of data when the existing data is converted to the new type. The length of a NVARCHAR field may be different from a VARCHAR field depending on how may bytes are needed to store the characters, see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/collations/collation-and-unicode-support?view=sql-server-ver15#storage_differences. We recommend to always back up your database before making any changes to it.
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