Hi, Norm

Firstly, I would like to sincerely apologize for the delayed response as we have been experiencing an unusually high number of tickets. I am sorry that it has taken longer than usual to respond to your concern and your patience is highly appreciated.

- I copied the symbols you have sent and successfully linked an Excel document containing the symbols in the cells, without issues, so our plugin can definitely render those symbols:

that is the back-end, and here is the front page:

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Could you send me the Excel file , and I can try to isolate the issue for you?

- Perhaps if you are having a very large text in a cell, you could try to set a column to multi-line string, to avoid character limit, if that makes sense?

That was just guessing, but without taking a closer look at the file, I can't confirm much yet.

Hey, Norm

Sorry that i took so much time to investigate this for you.

I was able to download a copy of the Excel file and made a new table, linked to the file without issues.

All the symbols are rendered in my back-end and the front-end page.

so, when Ilink the Excel file to a table, it works...

But, when I tried to import the Excel file, that is where I replicated the issue...

On the table preview, it shows OK, 

but when I finish table creation and go to editor screen,

it says there is no data in the table, quite odd.

I will have to escalate this to our 2nd level Team, and as soon as they respond I will come back to you immediately with new information.

Hi, Norm

My apology for taking so much time on this.

Despite our best efforts, we tried everything, but the issue is persistent, and it only happens for this particular file you sent us, otherwise we don't have any issues like that.

- Could you try to remove the symbols, if that's possible, then import the file to create a table,

and then perhaps insert the symbols after that?

I know it is not ideal, but sadly, we are not able to isolate exactly what seems to be the issue with this particular file/ or the specific symbols used causing this just during import.

Let me know how it goes, and we will do the best we can to provide any guidance, to the highest extent that our support can go.

Hi, Norm

My apology for taking so much long investigating this. 

Seems I have found the root of the issue. Basically, it is related to the default collation/charset of the WordPress database, where all the tables are created/stored. It is not allowing emojis to be stored.

- I might have a workaround for you. 

After importing the data without emojis to create a Manual table,

here is an example. 

 I created a new import. ( made sure to set any columns that can have longer text as multi-line strings);

 I just downloaded a copy of one of the Excel tabs you sent me the link to, the one without emojis.

And ,I get the same error if I try to paste an emoji anywhere.

- First thing to do is to change the entire default charset+collation of the WordPress database.

In my case, my WordPress database name is "current", it will be different for you.

You have to select the database, go to "Operations", and change the collation as shown, to utf8mb4_unicode_ci

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Now, in the editing tab of the table in WP-Admin, you have to check what is the table name in WP database - You can do this by enabling front-end editing ( you can later disable it, if needed)

in my case  table name is  wp_wpdatatable_19 :

Then, if you use phpMyAdmin, we can run this SQL query on the table ( make sure to select the correct table from the left side, then run an SQL query on the top, and press "Go" button on the bottom right :

ALTER TABLE wp_wpdatatable_19 CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

and now it allows me to paste any emojis on the table.

I am hoping this workaround is not too complicated. It does take a couple of steps to achieve,

but once you change the table's collation successfully, it will allow you to paste any emoji's and special symbols.

-

If you need help running all of this on the WP database,  I can do it for you remotely, if you wish, 

please provide me a temporary WP-admin (administrator) user for your site where this happens, so we could log in and take a look ‘from the inside’ as that’s the most efficient way to see and resolve the issue. 

We do not interfere with any data or anything else except for the plugin (in case that’s a production version of the site), and of course, we do not provide login data to third parties. 

You can write credentials here just check PRIVATE Reply so nobody can see them except us.

If you do that - just point me to the table ID. Thanks.