The following program produces the exact error message (aka throws this c++ exception): $ cat a.cpp #include <string> int main() { std::string s(NULL); return 0; } $ c++ a.cpp $ ./a.out terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::logic_error' what(): basic_string::_S_construct NULL not valid Aborted (core dumped) So somewhere in the OOo code a std::string object is created but it is passed a null pointer in the constructor. Of course you should not find a call like "std::string s(NULL);" in the OOo codebase, but more likely something like "std::string s(somestr);" where "somestr" is a "char*". It could also result from a function call like void foo(std::string s) { } char *str=NULL; foo(str); However the following test program shows a different behaviour: $ cat b.cpp #include <string> int main() { char *str=NULL; std::string s; s=str; return 0; } $ c++ b.cpp $ ./a.out Segmentation fault (core dumped) This is the reason I suspect an array call to be the likeliest case for throwing the exception. Now how to fix this? I suggest you compile yourself OOo with debugging enabled, then run your OOo with gdb and do your tests which should throw the exception. Then you can easily backtrace (bt) or go up (up) untill you find the throwling source code line. Then you can choose to either do a quick'n'dirty fix and just prefix the string construction with some "if(str==NULL)return;" or similar or look further to fix the reason why the C-String has not been initialized correctly (thus still be NULL). -- ---> Dirk Jagdmann ^ doj / cubic ----> http://cubic.org/~doj -----> http://llg.cubic.org