Well this was a very simple fix. It just took me a while to think of it.

After exhausting all the OO possibilities with the helpful folks in the OO forums, I began to ponder the suggestion that the problem was a "font" problem on the Debian side.

I began to ponder how logging in as root and logging in as user you get two completely different desktops. "Root" is totally unconfigured in my system. Interestingly enough it has only been recently that I had found a hack that let me log in as root.

Anyway, root looks just like it did the day I installed the OS. My user desktop is highly tweaked and looks very different.

I thought "What if....the font preferences in the two desktops are different and the user one is incompatible somehow?

This seemed highly likely.

So, tonight I logged in as root and looked at the font preferences. "Menu" fonts were set to Helvetica 12 pt.

I immediately exited and re-logged in as user. Those menu preferences all used "Clearly PUA". Menu fonts were set at "Clearly PUA 13 pt".

So, I changed the Menu font prefs to Helvitica 12 pt. and fired up OO.

FIXED!!!!!!!!!!!

I got my pulldown menus.

Wheee!!!!

sakiZ