Illegal mix of collations (utf8_unicode_ci,IMPLICIT) and (utf8_general_ci,IMPLICIT) for operation '='

Question

Error message on MySql:

Illegal mix of collations (utf8_unicode_ci,IMPLICIT) and (utf8_general_ci,IMPLICIT) for operation \'=\'

I have gone

Answer 1

This happens where a column is explicitly set to a different collation or the default collation is different in the table queried.

if you have many tables you want to change collation on run this query:

select concat('ALTER TABLE ', t.table_name , ' CONVERT TO CHARACTER 
SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;') from (SELECT table_name FROM 
information_schema.tables where table_schema='SCHRMA') t;

this will output the queries needed to convert all the tables to use the correct collation per column