DSOleFile version 2 doesn't allow empty strings as value

[Henrik]

Hi,
I'm trying to set CustomProperties through the newer version of the
DSOleFile (2.x) object for Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. For some
reason it seems that when I'm trying to set a custom property to an empty
string ("") it will simply cause all the other existing properties including
the newly created on to disappear when trying to look at them by right
clicking on properties on the file in Windows the choosing the properties
tab. If I look at the custom properties through for example word on the file,
Word will crash. How come? In the previous version of DSOleFile I was able to
set a custom property to an empty string without any problem, and as I still
am in code in Word VBA for example (even though the GUI doesn't allow me to).

We have other macros depending on these values so we cant just store another
value without going through alot of code, and we don't want to launch a
officeprogram at this point to among other things conserve resources.

The environment is VS.NET 1.1 with Office 2003 and DSOleFile 2.x on Windows
Server 2003.

Also, if there isn't a solution for this, is there anyone that could
recommend some API or similar that would allow us to do the same thing
without too much efforts?

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated...