saving as in Monterey isn't working

Do you use a MacBook with an external monitor? You'll find that the problem goes away after disconnecting your external monitor. When the monitor is connected, you can fix the problem (for now) by going to the settings and designating your MacBook as the main screen and the external monitor as extend screen. Good luck.

Using an external monitor as the main display neither "Save" nor "Save As" works. Doesn't work in Preview or any other of the apps I was using. It did "sort of" work when I set my MacBook Pro as the main display. This is a real serious problem!

It seems to be problem especially with monitors that use the usb-c to thunderbolt 2 dongle. I have the same problem with my apple Thunderbolt Display. I cannot believe that apple is recommended a workaround as an "official" answer to this problem and I hope is is fixed soon because it is really annoying and cost me hours of work because disconnecting the monitor (with some peripherals I need for my work, e.g. A/D converters) crashed the system. It is a very serious bug. Please apple! Fix this soon.

I am currently away from my Monterey device, but previously, you could hit the Option key and save as would show up on the drop down menu - does that not work?

If you want to call this to Apple's attention, you need to actually contact Apple - we are just other users here and Apple does not participate. You can use this:

www.apple.com/feedback

This worked, I cant believe an external monitor will cause a systemwide issue with save-as. I mean how long have they been writing operating system code??