I have a database that I use for a foreign language / vocabulary web application and was interfacing with it through phpMyAdmin (and of course php). I had about a thousand rows for Arabic text, which had been put into a char field. I wanted to expand the size of my entries, so I read that a text field could get me past the 255 character limit. I changed the field type to text- and all of the Arabic entries now display as question mark nonsense etc. I ve dealt with plenty of that type of display throughout the site s design, making sure that all of the character sets etc are right, and it has been displaying fine for months until this change.
I returned all of the table s structure to its original state to the best of my knowledge, and the problem persists. This is a pretty catastrophic loss, and I m basically wondering if these rows have just been scrambled irreversibly, or if I m simply just not resetting things properly. Any ideas on how to get this data back?
Thanks so much in advance.