Cannot locally import UTF-8 encoded SQL database on Mac

Question

I was importing a confirmed UTF-8 encoded SQL database into Sequel Pro on Mac and got thrown this error halfway through:

An error occurred when reading the file, as it could not be read in the encoding you selected (Autodetect - Unicode (UTF-8)).

Only 1273 queries were executed.

Is this because the database file was originally from a windows machine and it's linebreaks stuffed things up?

I imagine I will get this error even if I tried to send the same database over file transfer to a server so how can I fix it's encoding?

-- MySQL dump 10.13 Distrib 5.5.40-36.1, for Linux (x86_64)
--
-- Host: localhost Database: *****
-- ------------------------------------------------------
-- Server version 5.5.40-36.1-log
/*!40101 SET @OLD_CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT=@@CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT */;
/*!40101 SET @OLD_CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS=@@CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS */;
/*!40101 SET @OLD_COLLATION_CONNECTION=@@COLLATION_CONNECTION */;
/*!40101 SET NAMES utf8 */;
/*!40103 SET @OLD_TIME_ZONE=@@TIME_ZONE */;
/*!40103 SET TIME_ZONE='+00:00' */;
/*!40014 SET @OLD_UNIQUE_CHECKS=@@UNIQUE_CHECKS, UNIQUE_CHECKS=0 */;
/*!40014 SET @OLD_FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=@@FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS, FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0 */;
/*!40101 SET @OLD_SQL_MODE=@@SQL_MODE, SQL_MODE='NO_AUTO_VALUE_ON_ZERO' */;
/*!40111 SET @OLD_SQL_NOTES=@@SQL_NOTES, SQL_NOTES=0 */;
--
-- Table structure for table `******`
--

• Rick James: What text caused the problem?
• smokerockspunchcops: didn't say but my guess is a windows encoded line break
• Nawaz Sohail: Saving the file in notepad does have encoding option at the bottom.open the file in notepad on windows and save it as utf-8 format and then try loading it into MySQL
• smokerockspunchcops: So the file isn't real utf-8? If I am on a mac I can do the same thing with it's default text viewer to fix it?
• Jojje: As Nawaz wrote above, open the file in a text editor (i used TextWrangler on Mac), and resave as utf-8 format.

Answer 1

Based on this blog post

http://ilikekillnerds.com/2014/08/fixing-sequel-pro-sql-encoding-error-for-imported-sql-files/

When importing your database dump, you need to select Western (Mac OS Roman) as the encoding format for the file to import without issue.

• Douglas.Sesar: Does anyone know why this works? I would really like to know what problem existed with UTF-8 (or what problem with Windows), that did not let me import originally.
• Alex: Thanks, this also works for MySQL dumps that are generated on CentOS.
• Ahmad Mushtaq: I confirm this works on MacOS High Sierra 10.13.6. thanks @liangzan
• Urs: This works with Sequel Pro (Nightly) on Mojave as well
• HongPong: This worked correctly for a MySQL dump that originated on Linux / Mysql and needed to be imported over SSH to a MariaDB 10 database. Thanks.