diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index 0cc650160..89844144b 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,5 +1,9 @@
 2011-07-27  Wolfgang Sourdeau  <wsourdeau@inverse.ca>
 
+	* OpenChange/NSString+MAPIStore.m (-asUnicodeInMemCtx): return an
+	empty string when length == 0, otherwise the resulting pointer
+	will be NULL.
+
 	* OpenChange/plreader.m: new test tool to dump property lists
 	independently from their serialization format.
 
diff --git a/OpenChange/NSString+MAPIStore.m b/OpenChange/NSString+MAPIStore.m
index 81cdc1c7a..b0a7e0f5a 100644
--- a/OpenChange/NSString+MAPIStore.m
+++ b/OpenChange/NSString+MAPIStore.m
@@ -33,8 +33,13 @@
   char *unicode;
   NSData *encoded;
 
-  encoded = [self dataUsingEncoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding];
-  unicode = talloc_strndup (memCtx, [encoded bytes], [encoded length]);
+  if ([self length] > 0)
+    {
+      encoded = [self dataUsingEncoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding];
+      unicode = talloc_strndup (memCtx, [encoded bytes], [encoded length]);
+    }
+  else
+    unicode = talloc_memdup (memCtx, "", 1);
 
   return unicode;
 }