The problem with saving files went away after a complete
reinstallation. 

My spreadsheets work now well under OpenOffice, better
than with StarOffice 5.2. The one remaining problem is
printing (to either printer or a postscript file).
Certain numbers or letters will simply not print, leaving
the corresponding cell blank. (Perhaps a problem with
fonts?) The same entries print when the file is saved
as an Excel file and printed from Excel.