# Ignition 7.5.5 - Reporting Module and unicode strings

**URL:** <https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/ignition-7-5-5-reporting-module-and-unicode-strings/5947>\
**Category:** Ignition\
**Created:** [March 1, 2013, 2:19pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/ignition-7-5-5-reporting-module-and-unicode-strings/5947 "2013-03-01T14:19:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![gnguyen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/41988e/32.png) [@gnguyen](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/gnguyen)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2013, 2:19pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/ignition-7-5-5-reporting-module-and-unicode-strings/5947/1 "2013-03-01T14:19:44Z")

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Hi,

When using a dataset returning strings with accents (ie Février, Août…), the report module cannot interpret this.  
A workaround is to use unicodedata library to get the dataset without accents, but it’s not acceptable by our customers (SI and end users).

Any tricks ?

Regards,

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**Author:** ![Travis.Cox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Travis.Cox](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Travis.Cox)\
**Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 7:54pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/ignition-7-5-5-reporting-module-and-unicode-strings/5947/2 "2013-03-07T19:54:51Z")

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Those characters work for me. Can you export a small window that illustrates the problem and upload it here?

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**Author:** ![gnguyen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/41988e/32.png) [@gnguyen](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/gnguyen)\
**Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 9:39pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/ignition-7-5-5-reporting-module-and-unicode-strings/5947/3 "2013-03-07T21:39:51Z")

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Hi Travis,  
Sure, here it is.

[cgb\_2013-03-07\_2238\_partial.proj](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/original/2X/3/3591a99b0bdc10a13f196645844619f57eba8ab9.proj) (83.8 KB)

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**Author:** ![Travis.Cox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Travis.Cox](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Travis.Cox)\
**Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 9:53pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/ignition-7-5-5-reporting-module-and-unicode-strings/5947/4 "2013-03-07T21:53:16Z")

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Ok, I see. It is not the data to display but the column names that have accent characters. You can’t use accent characters as the column names with the report. It needs basic ASCII. The query should return simple column names like:

SELECT col1, col2 …

If your columns in the database have accent characters you can alias the names:

SELECT août AS aout …

removing the accent characters. In your table you can always override what the header says by using the customizer and changing the header name.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![gnguyen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/41988e/32.png) [@gnguyen](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/gnguyen)\
**Post date:** [March 7, 2013, 10:21pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/ignition-7-5-5-reporting-module-and-unicode-strings/5947/5 "2013-03-07T22:21:12Z")

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Yes, it’s what we did with a function with replace etc. But in these unicode days…  
By the way, the unicodedata library is working on some pc (tested 6 pcs) but not on some other. All in 7.5.5 and some Java 6, some Java 7…

`def sans_accents(chaine):
	import unicodedata 
	chaine = unicodedata.normalize('NFKD', chaine).encode('ASCII', 'ignore')
	return chaine`