How to check the encoding in the .dbf files?

Question

I am having difficulties when I try to load a shapefile into my database, the is because I do not know the encoding of the dbf portion of the shapefile. The attribute tables are in Spanish, I have tried UTF8 and LATIN1/ISO-8859-1.

How can I check the encoding of the dbf file? I do not want to waste anymore time trying all the encodings.

The database is Postgres 9.4.4 with Postgis 2.2.1, I use Qgis 2.10.1 to visualize the data before loading it to the database.

Looks like the files were made in a mac, not sure though.

dBase predated ISO encoding by many, many moons, so this is exclusively an application-specific issue. Please edit the question to specify what GIS software you are using. You should also specify the database software in use, since some of them predate encoding schemes as well. — Vince, Commented Jan 14, 2016 at 18:05
see this post gis.stackexchange.com/questions/3529/…, it would seem latin should work if you are using latin characters, fileformat.info/info/charset/UTF-8/list.htm — If you do not know- just GIS, Commented Jan 14, 2016 at 18:49
Have you tried with 'windows-1252'. I've come across some shapefiles with such encoding. — Germán Carrillo, Commented Jan 14, 2016 at 20:29
From your post it's not clear when exactly you see the question marks - with the shape in QGIS (as label or attribute table?) or in the database (pgadmin, command line, again QGIS?). Have you tried fixing the encoding with plugins.qgis.org/plugins/shapefile_encoding_fixer ? Have you tried this: gis.stackexchange.com/a/31889/8673 ? Also take a look at the comments of this answer, maybe creating on mac was some issue gis.stackexchange.com/a/15914/8673 — bennos, Commented Jan 15, 2016 at 13:51

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-04-13 12:34:11Z

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When having enconding issues with a Shapefile you can try the QGIS Plugin Shapefile Encoding Fixer.

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