South Africa is appealing a decision to make Microsoft Corp. s Office Open XML format an internationally recognized standard for electronic documents, officials said Wednesday. The South African Bureau of Standards sent a letter of protest to two Geneva-based organizations that held a worldwide ballot on Microsoft's application last month, complaining that the process was poorly conducted and rushed. "We challenge the validity of a process that, from beginning to end, required all parties to analyze far too much information in far too little time," SABS Chief Executive Martin Kuscus said in the May 22 letter to the International Standards Organization and the International Electrotechnical Commission.

Long before Microsoft started selling Office 2007, its plan to switch to OOXML for saving Word, Excel and PowerPoint files sparked worries among competitors that future changes made by the software maker could render government or corporate archives unreadable - especially by non-Microsoft programs. That could lock the lucrative large customers in to buying software from Microsoft forever, they said.

Supporters of a rival format called OpenDocument Format have claimed that Microsoft used strong-arm tactics to win approval from the national committees that voted on the new standard last month. ODF - also an international standard recognized by ISO - is used by Sun Microsystems Inc. and IBM Corp. software.

"It is our opinion that the process followed during all stages of this fast track has harmed the reputations of both ISO and IEC," Kuscus said, adding that "negative publicity has, in turn, also harmed the reputation of all member bodies of ISO and IEC."

South Africa's appeal is in line with its government's policy to use free open-source software except in cases where proprietary software is "demonstrated to be significantly superior," according to a government Web site.

The country is also home to Mark Shuttleworth, founder of a popular flavor of the Linux open-source operating system called Ubuntu, who has publicly expressed his opposition to the OOXML ratification.

South Africa may also have been swayed by arguments from Sun and IBM, said Rob Helm, director of research at the independent group Directions on Microsoft.

The ISO OOXML process was "politically charged," Helm said in an interview. "All the vendors involved lobbied the national bodies heavily."

But, Helm said, conjectures aside, South Africa's complaint raises valid points.

"The voting procedure was dodgy, and there was very little time to review what even Microsoft admits is a complex standard," he said.

The appeal means Microsoft will have to wait at least another month before knowing for sure whether the file format is approved as an open standard.

Since ISO approved OOXML as a standard, Microsoft has said it will also ensure that rival file formats work just as well in Office 2007, and that documents saved in the Office 2007 format will work smoothly with competing programs. Opponents say OOXML still locks out competitors and perpetuates Microsoft's programs' massive market share.

Microsoft declined to comment on the complaint Wednesday.

The IEC said South Africa's was the only appeal it had received to date, but that other countries have until May 31 to follow suit.

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AP Technology Writer Jessica Mintz in Seattle contributed to this report.