ulaar

Thanks Elan for your quick response. I tried various versions of what you suggested — but it didn’t work. What finally worked for me is the following:
1. I did a Dreamhost “One Click install” – which creates a new WordPress database with a fresh set of 11 tables.
2. I split the import SQL file into separate files (users & usermeta, posts and postmeta, comments & commentmeta, etc.).
3. Deleted the default set of records from users and usermeta tables, followed by import of the user & usermeta records (from old db) and so on… for the remaining tables.
4. I skipped the “options” table because in an earlier iteration, that messed up my WP dashboard & install completely.

Anyway, I’m almost there except that I have a whole bunch of umlaut characters — inserted in the “posts” and “comments” tables (most of the posts unfortunately). For example, look at this:
http://www.techsangam.com/2011/09/21/elitist-school-systems-teachers-with-high-ambition-parents-with-low-expectations/

I used the “Search and Replace” plugin to determine how widespread one of those characters (Â) is — and it’s HIGHLY widespread. Problem is that this plugin is also matching the regular “a” character — so obviously I can’t use it. Any reliable way of doing mass search-and-replace for these special characters?

Thanks,.
Vishy