Garbage characters from MySQL db connected to a pivot table in Excel 2012

On a 64bit, Windows 8 desktop. I am running Excel 2012.

I understand that Excel 2012 is a 32 bit application so I have installed a 32bit MySQl connector and I can access the database and tables to set up the datasource for the pivot table. However, when I run a query to get data into the pivot table some of the data has been replaced by garbage characters, which mostly look like Chinese.

Has anyone come across this before? Any ideas?

How are you connecting to the server?
Is it with code or with Excel's built-in functionality?

- I'm setting up the data connection with Excel

Could this be a problem with the MySQL server settings?
- Possibly, but I'm not sure what it could be then. This pivottable was working perfectly well until we moved to a Windows 8 64 bit box.
The Excel is 32 bit so I set up the ODBC MySQL connection to use the 32 bit drivers

Also, have you checked if you are using 32 or 641 bit Excel?

By the way, there is a version of MySQL that comes with an Excel add-in.

Have you tried that?


PS Can't remember which version it is, but I'll check

That was the first thing I did when starting this exercise, install the 64bit connector. But then when I tried to open the data connection in Excel I got an error indicating that there was an architecture mismatch (the actual words I didn't capture).

I've tried changing the charset for both Excel and MySQL (latin > utf8) with no change.

Current plan is to upgrade to 64bit Office and see if that resolves the issue.

Many thanks for you suggestions.