Thanks for the feedback. At least I now know that it's not just something I am doing.
I also got it working by manually editing menu.php but as you say as soon as you even touch something in the GUI you have to redo the manual edits. I have also found some grundgy positioning problems where the code doesn't track the GUI.
At the peak of my frustration however is the complete disinterest of the technical support department about the problem. This is something finite, repeatable and just plain not doing what it is supposed to do.
I still wait for the attention of technical support.