I followed the steps in Post 88 posted by moosesoom in this thread, since my cart was already set up, and the procedure worked beautifully.

Moosesoom stated:

I solved the same problem with this thread's help.

As my database was already online I followed these steps to convert it to UTF-8:

1. Complete export of database from phpmyadmin (including Add DROP TABLE / VIEW / PROCEDURE / FUNCTION setting)
2. Then export file editing to change every instances of CHARSET=latin1 to CHARSET=utf8
3. Import of modified file to recreate database from scratch with every previous content (but in utf8)
The instruction to check DROP TABLE/VIEW/PROCEDURE/FUNCTION as well as keep the other items which are checked by default in the PHPMyAdmin Export procedure was a critical instruction.

COLLATE=latin1 and COLLATE latin1 also needed to be replaced, but a global search and replace in Notepad++ replaced all of the latin1 occurrences with utf8. My latin1 version was latin1_general_ci (not latin1_swedish_ci), so that fit in with just a replacement of latin with utf8.

I accepted the default name _DB_ on export, selected "save as file" and then after the search and replace named the file to import the same name as the exported file, having been reminded recently that was necessary for the import to succeed.

To be sure the prior table would not interfere with the new table, I dropped the tables, all of which had remained in the database, before importing the changed file.

I mention the above extra detail because someone asked moosesoom to describe the steps in more detail. People more familiar with PHPMyAdmin would automatically know the above.

My site is FASTER now, really noticeably faster.

Thanks to moosesoom and also to Dr. Byte who is always so "on target."

I really thought changing the latin1 would be a fundamental change in the database that would slow my site down, but this is a simple word-replacement procedure that improved the site's speed.

Notageek