TIGER/Line Shapefiles, Partnership Shapefiles, and Cartographic Boundary Files (Shapefile format) may not correctly display special characters in all systems due to character encoding differences. Special characters such as accent marks or tildes, which appear in many shapefile attributes, especially in Puerto Rico, will not look correct if your software applies the wrong character encoding.

We have created a code page file for download that will address this issue. See the directions below for instructions on how to use this code page file to ensure proper display of special characters.

More Details on Character Encoding:  In the late 2000’s, the UTF-8 character encoding became the most prevalent character encoding. Many programs, including ArcGIS, now default to the UTF-8 character encoding when the metadata does not accurately spell out the proper encoding. Our products through 2014, use the ISO-8859-1 character encoding. We updated to UTF-8 character encoding beginning with our 2015 products.

Products Affected:

• TIGER/Line Files and Shapefiles through 2014
• Cartographic Boundary Files – Shapefiles through 2014
• Partnership Shapefiles – through 2014

To associate the appropriate code page file with your shapefile:

1. Download the file: iso_8859_1.cpg
2. Rename it to match the name of your shapefile keeping the .cpg extension