ascii codec cant decode byte 0xe9

Question

I have done some research and seen solutions but none have worked for me.

Python - 'ascii' codec can't decode byte

This didn\'t work for me. And

Answer 1

encode = turn a unicode string into a bytestring

decode = turn a bytestring into unicode

since you already have a bytestring you need decode to make it a unicode instance (assuming that is actually what you are trying to do)

output_string = '\n'.join(output_lines)
print output_string.decode("latin1")  #now this returns unicode