MySQL distinction between e and é (e acute) - UNIQUE index

Question

I have a table, students, with 3 columns: id, name, and age. I have a UNIQUE index Index_2 on

Answer 1

I found that

ALTER TABLE students CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin;

did not work for me, as it didn't change the collation of existing columns, as can be seen in the results of this query:

SHOW FULL COLUMNS from students;

However, the following query did the job and converted existing columns to utf8_bin collation:

ALTER TABLE students CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin;

(notice the "CONVERT TO")