diff --git a/django_app/redbox_app/redbox_core/views/document_views.py b/django_app/redbox_app/redbox_core/views/document_views.py
index 5dafde0b..ae18c267 100644
--- a/django_app/redbox_app/redbox_core/views/document_views.py
+++ b/django_app/redbox_app/redbox_core/views/document_views.py
@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
 import logging
+import re
 import uuid
 from collections.abc import MutableSequence, Sequence
 from pathlib import Path
@@ -6,7 +7,7 @@
 from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model
 from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required
 from django.core.exceptions import FieldError, SuspiciousFileOperation, ValidationError
-from django.core.files.uploadedfile import UploadedFile
+from django.core.files.uploadedfile import UploadedFile, InMemoryUploadedFile
 from django.http import HttpRequest, HttpResponse, JsonResponse
 from django.shortcuts import get_object_or_404, redirect, render
 from django.urls import reverse
@@ -14,6 +15,7 @@
 from django.views import View
 from django.views.decorators.http import require_http_methods
 from django_q.tasks import async_task
+from io import BytesIO
 
 from redbox_app.redbox_core.models import File
 from redbox_app.worker import ingest
@@ -84,6 +86,8 @@ def post(self, request: HttpRequest) -> HttpResponse:
 
         for uploaded_file in uploaded_files:
             errors += self.validate_uploaded_file(uploaded_file)
+            if not self.is_utf8_compatible(uploaded_file):
+                uploaded_file = self.convert_to_utf8(uploaded_file)
 
         if not errors:
             for uploaded_file in uploaded_files:
@@ -124,6 +128,42 @@ def validate_uploaded_file(uploaded_file: UploadedFile) -> Sequence[str]:
 
         return errors
 
+    @staticmethod
+    def is_utf8_compatible(uploaded_file: UploadedFile) -> bool:
+        try:
+            uploaded_file.open()
+            uploaded_file.read().decode('utf-8')
+            uploaded_file.seek(0)
+            logger.info("File is compatible with utf-8 - ready for processing")
+            return True
+        except UnicodeDecodeError:
+            logger.info("File is incompatible. Converting...")
+            return False
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def convert_to_utf8(uploaded_file: UploadedFile) -> UploadedFile:
+        try:
+            uploaded_file.open()
+            content = uploaded_file.read().decode('ISO-8859-1')
+
+            # Detect and replace non-UTF-8 characters
+            utf8_content = re.sub(r'[^\x00-\x7F]+', lambda x: x.group(0).encode('utf-8').decode('utf-8'), content)
+            logger.info(f"The content {utf8_content}")
+            # Creating a new InMemoryUploadedFile object with the converted content
+            new_uploaded_file = InMemoryUploadedFile(
+                file=BytesIO(utf8_content.encode('utf-8')),
+                field_name=uploaded_file.field_name,
+                name=uploaded_file.name,
+                content_type='application/octet-stream',
+                size=len(utf8_content),
+                charset='utf-8'
+            )
+            logger.info("this worked")
+            return new_uploaded_file
+        except Exception as e:
+            logger.exception("Error converting file %s to UTF-8.", uploaded_file, exc_info=e)
+            return uploaded_file
+
     @staticmethod
     def ingest_file(uploaded_file: UploadedFile, user: User) -> Sequence[str]:
         try:
@@ -145,6 +185,7 @@ def ingest_file(uploaded_file: UploadedFile, user: User) -> Sequence[str]:
             async_task(ingest, file.id, task_name=file.unique_name, group="ingest")
 
 
+
 @login_required
 def remove_doc_view(request, doc_id: uuid):
     file = get_object_or_404(File, id=doc_id)