Terry,
This may not be what's happening to you, but one "gotcha" I have learned about the hard way is that if you are in the process of attaching a new profile to another one (a child to a parent, for example), you can't make any changes at all to the parent until you have finished adding (and saving) the child you are about to add.
I have a tendency to notice typos in the original profile, and think "I should fix that!" If you do make a change to the parent before you finish adding the new profile, then it somehow spoils your attempt to add the child. I don't think you get any helpful messages -- just a frustrating experience where you try again and again to save the child, and nothing happens.
Reba