Re: convert field

[Rick James]

The character_set_% settings tell MySQL what the external encoding is. Before inserting the utf8 rows, do
SET NAMES utf8;

window 1255 is Hebrew, correct?

mysql> SHOW CHARSET WHERE Description LIKE 'ISO%';
+---------+-----------------------------+-------------------+--------+
| Charset | Description                 | Default collation | Maxlen |
+---------+-----------------------------+-------------------+--------+
| latin2  | ISO 8859-2 Central European | latin2_general_ci |      1 |
| hebrew  | ISO 8859-8 Hebrew           | hebrew_general_ci |      1 |
| greek   | ISO 8859-7 Greek            | greek_general_ci  |      1 |
| latin5  | ISO 8859-9 Turkish          | latin5_turkish_ci |      1 |
| latin7  | ISO 8859-13 Baltic          | latin7_general_ci |      1 |
+---------+-----------------------------+-------------------+--------+

So, before inserting the other rows, do
SET NAMES hebrew;

See also http://mysql.rjweb.org/doc.php/charcoll