'ascii' codec can't encode character - jupyter notebook python 3.9

Question

i know this has brought up quite a few times, but I'm actually having quite a funky issue. I am trying to run a python 3.9 notebook, but even if i don't write anything in the cells, i get an error message about encoding. In the past, i have had this issue with other versions of python, but to simply save the notebook, i would 'clear cells' then save it from there. but in python 3.9, i cant even do that.

I have tried encoding with creating a jupyter_notebook_config.py script in my home folder that contains:

but it still fails!

when i check the encoding of notebooks i have created, they are all like this:

enforce opening in utf8 or make sure file has BOM , see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2223882/whats-the-difference-between-utf-8-and-utf-8-with-bom — ykhrustalev, Feb 28 '23 at 17:37
@ykhrustalev but i am not even trying to open a file, its simply the notebook itself which is encoded in ascii and not utf8 — Tom Benson, Feb 28 '23 at 17:44
Try opening with notepad and then save as with encoding set to UTF-8? — Michael Cao, Feb 28 '23 at 17:52
@MichaelCao maybe not a bad idea. how would i set the encoding in python 3.9 ? — Tom Benson, Feb 28 '23 at 18:01
@ykhrustalev but my aim isn't to open a file.. its just the general notebook encoding — Tom Benson, Feb 28 '23 at 18:01
you need to show the error you have, so far, you state that encoding is the problem, but don't show us the problem — ykhrustalev, Feb 28 '23 at 18:03
in my 2nd image, i show an 'unexpected error while saving' - this is the only thing that i see. — Tom Benson, Feb 28 '23 at 18:04

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 06 '23 at 13:47

Looks like this might have happened once before, but it never got resolved.

Mine has absolutely no trouble reading and writing UTF-8 .ipynb files. The character it's complaining about is the “ "LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK" character, but I'd imagine it could be any character.

Can you check the log window/file for Jupyter Notebook (the NotebookApp stuff) to see if there's a stack trace? I only see two places where that particular error message might get thrown. There also aren't that many places where ascii appears in the code, and most of them involve base64 strings that should be ASCII anyway.

'ascii' codec can't encode character - jupyter notebook python 3.9

1 Answers1