Square Characters in Query Results

[briangriffin]

For some reason, starting this morning I'm getting a large quantity of square characters inserted into my query results.

This occurs whether the results go to text or grid. Everything looks normal until I either paste the results or save the results file, then view it in either Excel or Notepad.

I've changed the various options, but no change. I've found posts that describe how to get rid of them within the results, but nothing on this particular problem.

I've never seen anything like this, and I've been using this particular workstation/Management Studio for about five months. No Windows patches have been pushed out.

Thanks for your ideas.

 

[Crowley16]

not sure but have you checked your server collation? or maybe keyboard setup?

sounds like there are characters that isn't able to be displayed...

--------------------
Procrastinate Now!

 

[genomon]

The square means that there is no graphical representation for the character code that is stored. One way these propagate is linefeed and carriage returns that are included as input either in files, or through data entry (such as an ASP).

Beir bua agus beannacht!

 

[SQLSister]

Another cause for them is data imports where the data source was unicode and the data destination was not. The characters in the originating data don't exist in the destination collation, so it doesn't know what to do with them.

If it just happened today, check to see if data was imported yesterday or if someone made data struture changfes to change the fileds from nvarchar to varchar. Something new happened last night, I suggest you look into all the things that were scheduled to happen in jobs.

"NOTHING is more important in a database than integrity." ESquared

 

[briangriffin]

I knew the data was good, and I had restarted Management Studio, but today I rebooted and the problem has gone away. Ghost in the machine...

Thanks for your input.