polish characters in mysql change to ????

What charset are you using, I've just tried it successfuly with this column:
VARCHAR(255) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATION utf8_genersal_ci

Used the polish chars from this page:
http://www.geocities.com/click2speak/unicode/chars_pl.html

I've tried with CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATION utf8_genersal_ci but still won't work -
Should I be able to copy a character and paste it straight in - or do I need to convert and use code?

tried phpmyadmin and got the following:
 Warning: #1366 Incorrect string value: '\xC4\x84' for column 'text' at row 1

this was attempting to copy/paste the A first example from the chars link in your first comment

I tested mine in Navicat too, using copy and paste. The error phpmyadmin returns has been reported as a bug, but apparently isn't a bug: http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=30131
You may have seen this page already.

Can you show the result from SHOW CREATE TABLE tablename

CREATE TABLE `polish` (
  `id` int(10) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `text` longtext character set latin1 NOT NULL,
  `text2` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
  PRIMARY KEY  (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=2 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8

As you can see I've tried a longtext and a varchar, although I would need to use longtext ideally

thanks

Column type shouldn't make a difference. I've tried your table in MySql on Win2K3 & Linux and text2 can contain the unicode characters 0xc484 where as text cannot.

That seems correct as `text2` is using the table's default charset of utf8, whereas latin1 used by `text` cannot store unicode chars.
What I can't understand is that you can't get text2 to store unicode chars, I see no reason for that.

sorry just noticed, I had also removed the char set latin from the 'text' field so the table was utf8 general ci

A couple of questions, is utf8 int the list when you execute this:
SHOW CHARSET;
This will list all the character sets allowed, though I imagine utf8 will be there as it allows you to create a table using it.

Also, do you get the "ogenok" ( I think that's the correct term)
SELECT _utf8 0xc484;

Finally, what OS and version of MySql are you using?

Yes I get utf / utf8_general_ci in the list

but not the other
I'm using MAMP for testing php5/mysql5 on MAC OSX10.5.6

big5      Big5 Traditional Chinese      big5_chinese_ci      2
dec8      DEC West European      dec8_swedish_ci      1
cp850      DOS West European      cp850_general_ci      1
hp8      HP West European      hp8_english_ci      1
koi8r      KOI8-R Relcom Russian      koi8r_general_ci      1
latin1      cp1252 West European      latin1_swedish_ci      1
latin2      ISO 8859-2 Central European      latin2_general_ci      1
swe7      7bit Swedish      swe7_swedish_ci      1
ascii      US ASCII      ascii_general_ci      1
ujis      EUC-JP Japanese      ujis_japanese_ci      3
sjis      Shift-JIS Japanese      sjis_japanese_ci      2
hebrew      ISO 8859-8 Hebrew      hebrew_general_ci      1
tis620      TIS620 Thai      tis620_thai_ci      1
euckr      EUC-KR Korean      euckr_korean_ci      2
koi8u      KOI8-U Ukrainian      koi8u_general_ci      1
gb2312      GB2312 Simplified Chinese      gb2312_chinese_ci      2
greek      ISO 8859-7 Greek      greek_general_ci      1
cp1250      Windows Central European      cp1250_general_ci      1
gbk      GBK Simplified Chinese      gbk_chinese_ci      2
latin5      ISO 8859-9 Turkish      latin5_turkish_ci      1
armscii8      ARMSCII-8 Armenian      armscii8_general_ci      1
utf8      UTF-8 Unicode      utf8_general_ci      3
ucs2      UCS-2 Unicode      ucs2_general_ci      2
cp866      DOS Russian      cp866_general_ci      1
keybcs2      DOS Kamenicky Czech-Slovak      keybcs2_general_ci      1
macce      Mac Central European      macce_general_ci      1
macroman      Mac West European      macroman_general_ci      1
cp852      DOS Central European      cp852_general_ci      1
latin7      ISO 8859-13 Baltic      latin7_general_ci      1
cp1251      Windows Cyrillic      cp1251_general_ci      1
cp1256      Windows Arabic      cp1256_general_ci      1
cp1257      Windows Baltic      cp1257_general_ci      1
binary      Binary pseudo charset      binary      1
geostd8      GEOSTD8 Georgian      geostd8_general_ci      1
cp932      SJIS for Windows Japanese      cp932_japanese_ci      2
eucjpms      UJIS for Windows Japanese      eucjpms_japanese_ci      3

Sorry, do you get null returned, no rows returned, or is the character displayed just plain incorrect?

SELECT _utf8 0xc498 AS `utf8 char`, HEX(_utf8 0xc498) AS `hex`;

This is what I get:

I get:

utf8 char
?

hex
C498

Utterly bizarre. I can't see any reason why utf8 shouldn't work on OSX.

I doubt this will tell me anything much, but can you show what charset & collation the server & clients are using:
SHOW VARIABLES LIKE '%character%';
SHOW VARIABLES LIKE '%collation%';

character_set_client      latin1
character_set_connection      latin1
character_set_database      latin1
character_set_filesystem      binary
character_set_results      latin1
character_set_server      latin1
character_set_system      utf8

maybe this is the reason, although not sure how I can alter it in navicat?

collation_connection      latin1_swedish_ci
collation_database      latin1_swedish_ci
collation_server      latin1_swedish_ci