How to change the default charset of a MySQL table?

If you want to change the table default character set and all character columns to a new character set, use a statement like this:

ALTER TABLE tbl_name CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET charset_name;

So query will be:

ALTER TABLE etape_prospection CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8;

Change table's default charset:

ALTER TABLE etape_prospection  CHARACTER SET utf8,  COLLATE utf8_general_ci;

To change string column charset exceute this query:

ALTER TABLE etape_prospection  CHANGE COLUMN etape_prosp_comment etape_prosp_comment TEXT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;

The ALTER TABLE MySQL command should do the trick. The following command will change the default character set of your table and the character set of all its columns to UTF8.

ALTER TABLE etape_prospection CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;

This command will convert all text-like columns in the table to the new character set. Character sets use different amounts of data per character, so MySQL will convert the type of some columns to ensure there's enough room to fit the same number of characters as the old column type.

I recommend you read the ALTER TABLE MySQL documentation before modifying any live data.