We recently moved a database for an oscommerce site from a Windows to Linux server. Windows simply couldn't do the job.

It runs much better in Linux, however the database appears to have inserted question marks in certain areas. One product's description had a degree sign, as in 360 degrees. It now displays a ?. There are other examples. Obviously, it is responding to characters it does not recognize.

Has anyone encountered this before, and is there an easy way to fix the copy globally, or do I need to go in and edit each of over 3,000 products? <sigh>

Thanks in advance ...

It is a normal encoding issue when backing up your database. Generally speaking, you need to set your charset to be utf8.

Have a nice day,

That helps ... thanks. Any way to convert it to remove the erroneous characters?

you really need to export your database in utf mode for you to not see the unwanted characters you want.