In a statement released April 1, standards organization Ecma International said that the International Standards Organization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) had approved the Office Open XML File Format as an international standard.

Ecma approved Office Open XML as an international standard in December 2006 and submitted it to ISO for fast-track approval in January 2007. ISO/IEC are expected to publicly announce the final vote results April 2.

But the controversy over the entire voting process appears unlikely to die down anytime soon, especially as the chairman of the Norwegian standards committee responsible for evaluating Office Open XML has sent ISO a letter asking for its "yes" vote to be suspended pending a Norwegian government investigation into why the country's vote was changed.