diff --git a/tbl_change.php b/tbl_change.php
index 8ec8025d3..adeb91cb9 100644
--- a/tbl_change.php
+++ b/tbl_change.php
@@ -418,6 +418,7 @@ foreach ($rows as $row_id => $vrow) {
 
         // Prepares the field value
         $real_null_value = FALSE;
+        $special_chars_encoded = '';
         if (isset($vrow)) {
             // On a BLOB that can have a NULL value, the is_null() returns
             // true if it has no content but for me this is different than