When I open your document, it appears to be in landscape mode with a
table at the bottom of the first column on page one, and an exact
duplicate for page 2. There is nothing in column 2 - literally - I
can't position the cursor in column 2 at all.
In experimenting with the document, it appears as though the second
column is not populated at all. When I go down from the bottom of
column 1, it goes directly to the next page. If I delete a line or
two above the table on page one, the page break does not move.
I went back and retraced your steps exactly - create a document with
your parameters (landscape, 0.39" margins all around, 2 columns), put
a 2x2 table in column 1, position it to the bottom with carriage
returns, select that column and copy it to column 2. Save as MS Word
97-2000 .doc, re-open, select column 1, copy to column 2, save again,
reopen.
I get the same results as you.
My file is online at http://tinyurl.com/28o924a as test2.doc.
LibreOffice 3.3.0
OOO330m17 (Build:3)
libreoffice-build 3.3.0.1
2.6.35-23-generic #41-Ubuntu SMP Wed Nov 24 11:55:36 UTC 2010 x86_64
GNU/Linux
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=10.10
DISTRIB_CODENAME=maverick
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 10.10"