Playing GIF's in Word versions prior to 365

[wpryan]

Hi there, I developed some documents in Word 365 that include embedded GIF's. Unfortunately it seems that embedded cannot be natively played in Word versions prior to 365. I did find an article, though, that states



"To play animated GIF files, you must open the files in the Preview/Properties window. To do this, select the animated GIF file, and then on the View menu, click Preview/Properties."

On my Office 365 installation, there is no option for Preview/Properties on the View menu. I need to provide some specific guidance to my colleagues who need to review the documents.

What am I missing? Does anyone have a suggestion? If anyone could provide screenshots of the View menu, I appreciate it...

[Charles Kenyon]

Word 365 is a moving target / definition. In many ways it is meaningless, or at least ambiguous.

Over time it has had the same features as Word 2013, Word 2016, Word 2019, and Word 2021.
I am sorry, but I use Word primarily to put words on paper and so have not had use for animated gifs because they do not translate to paper.

[gmayor]

It is only recently that Word offered the ability to play animated GIF files. Previously the only way to do so was to save the document as a web page and view in a browser. Have you considered embedding a video file instead? Insert > Object > Create from File.

[wpryan]

Thanks for your reply. The reason I didn't want to insert the MP4 file is that I wanted a "thumbnail" of the screen shot that the person could click to play. Easily done with PDF. With Word, there is an icon display instead of the screenshot I wanted...

[wpryan]

I tried adding Windows Media Player as a legacy control, and chose an MP4 as the content. The progress bar of the media player progresses, but there is no content displayed...