I have tried many times, on several hosts (including my own apache server) to export my db via phpmyadmin and then restore it. Whatever format I use for export the import fails with:

#1064 - You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'PK' at line 1

Is this a bug? Where exactly is my syntax problem? How can an export of a perfectly working site fail to import?

the error message looks like your backup is zipped. If so, try uncompressing the zip file and uploading the .sql script that is inside of it. AFAIK if your PHP installation does not include zip support then phpMyAdmin will not be able to uncompress a zip archive.

Thank you, zips, bzip, gzip it's all greek to me. Seems a but off that phpmyadmin would be able to export as zip but not import it. Anyway it's sorted now so thank you.