Comment 22 for bug 490410

For sure I have been able to consistently reproduce it on Xubuntu v9.10, v10.04 and now v10.10. From my experience (and other posts) it seems:
  a) specific to Xubuntu (not Ubuntu or other platforms)
  b) specific to OpenOffice (Xubuntu doesn't seem to do this with other apps)
  c) not specific to one machine (I've seen 3 machines, others are reported also)
  c) not specific to NVidia (it's reproduced on Intel graphics also)
so I suspect that on a Xubuntu machine there's a fair chance the problem could be reproduced.

I just discovered that installing the "openoffice.org-gtk" package in Xubuntu somewhat resolves the problem, but it gives the whole spreadsheet contents a faded appearance (black text appears grey) which is not good. Perhaps this gives a clue to the root of the original problem though.