Also make sure that you set which IP addresses are able to access the database externally or else you might not be able to connect from your home computer directly to the database.
I have a similar problem: Characters in my remote database are correct. If I download the database tables one at a time, characters are also correct, but If I download the whole database at once, then swedish characters appear. I am currently working on downloading every table one at a time to see if one of them is causing the problem for the whole database. Any idea? Thank you.
Try to use design view to change the table type to something else like blob or memo, then try to export.