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Though graphviz' generic dot routine accepts UTF8 and in that respect also umlauts, the latex graphviz package does not. It always generates an error if an umlaut is included in a label (See https://www.overleaf.com/13308817yvjnvkfvcpxy#/51278614/ for example).

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage[pdf]{graphviz}

\begin{document}
\digraph{ao}{rankdir=LR; 
   a [label="Ä"]; % graphviz allows double quoted labels
   o [label=<Ö>]; % and html labels
   a->o;}
\end{document}
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  • Please, add a minimal example, not a link. – egreg Jan 20 '18 at 16:06
  • Works ok for me on mac os with tex live 2017 (after I had done brew install graphviz). – Thruston Jan 20 '18 at 16:37
  • Can you also add the error message? – egreg Jan 20 '18 at 16:45
  • note the file at overleaf is quite different to the one you show here, please post the error message you get from this file. – David Carlisle Jan 20 '18 at 16:48
  • Well by the help of Heiko's answer I edited the Overleaf code into a working example, that has both the possibility to use double quotes with german babel and umlauts. Thank you. – user1491229 Jan 20 '18 at 17:53
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The problem is caused by

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

Then, the umlauts consists of active characters that unexpectedly get expanded, when the .dot file is written:

digraph ao {rankdir=LR;
a [label="\unhbox \voidb@x \bgroup \let \unhbox \voidb@x \setbox \@tempboxa \hbox {A\global \mathchardef \accent@spacefactor \spacefactor }\accent 127 A\egroup \spacefactor \accent@spacefactor "]; o [label=<\unhbox \voidb@x \bgroup \let \unhbox \voidb@x \setbox \@tempboxa \hbox {O\global \mathchardef \accent@spacefactor \spacefactor }\accent 127 O\egroup \spacefactor \accent@spacefactor >]; a->o;}

The expansion can be prevented by e-TeX's \detokenize:

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[pdf]{graphviz}

\begin{document}
\digraph{ao}{rankdir=LR;
   a [label="\detokenize{Ä}"]; % graphviz allows double quoted labels
   o [label=<\detokenize{Ö}>]; % and html labels
   a->o;}
\end{document}

Then, the file ao.dot preserves the umlauts:

digraph ao {rankdir=LR;
a [label="Ä"]; o [label=<Ö>]; a->o;}

The result:

Result

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  • Thanks a lot. That answer solved the problem. Besides, It would help to reuse this answer if it were possible to add some more relevant tags. I'm not allowed to add tags like 'umlaut' or 'graphviz' that would be more appropriate. – user1491229 Jan 20 '18 at 17:43

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