Dear Axalon: You did it! In StarOffice, as you suggested, I did the following: Do this, File->New->Text document type blah File->close yes to save, file name is blah, Ok Now, File-># (it's 1 if you've fresh install) type "blah blah", so now you have three blahs File->Close yes to save Now look in backup/ And blah.bak is there!!! Question: Do I then first have to save the file, then reopen it and save it again? Is that the standard way of creating a backup? Anyway, that's the way it seems to work. I just changed the paths from the default to /home/sher/docs for both save and backup. Works perfectly. Saved a few lines under a name. Reopened added a few words. Saved again. Bingo: the file and .bak appear next to each other. Here is the data. Look for yoke.sdw and yoke.bak below: [sher@adsl-77-232-87 sher]$ cd docs [sher@adsl-77-232-87 docs]$ ls anna extra inferno linux plays shklov~1 wentzell ascii faina inferno.bak marshak poetry svezho wizard benjamin fiction inv natasha reviews tech yahoo-edu.doc commerce freeware ladycat old rus temp yale data friends let-in others russmark vaginov yoke.bak dostov general let-out pdf scholar websher yoke.sdw [sher@adsl-77-232-87 docs]$ I guess this does make sense, after all. StarOffice cannot create an automatic backup until the file has already been given a name. In WP8, though, you can create a BK! file the first time you save a file. Just curious if this is the way StarOffice creates a backup for others. Let me know, please. My thanks to Axalon and everyone else for helping me solve this mysterious problem so I can finally get back to work and enjoy using StarOffice. Benjamin -- Benjamin and Anna Sher [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sher's Russian Web http://www.websher.net