How to Insert GIF in Word – 3 Ways

How to Insert GIF in Word; Microsoft Word is designed to create digital documents, mainly for writing texts and making all the necessary changes to them, the program also has the ability to insert drawings, graphs, photographs and many other elements. In this article, we will tell you how to insert a gif in Word.

GIF is a raster graphic format created for the exchange of images between users. GIF supports animation and transparency.

A GIF file can contain static or animated images. This format often saves animated images created from several page frames, which are called “gifs”.

In some cases, the user may need to embed an animated gif directly into Word. Inserting an animated GIF in Word will allow you to visually show the action being performed, draw attention, increase the reader’s interest in the contents of the document, express feelings, and so on.

Since an animated image is inserted into the document, the user has doubts about whether it is possible to insert a GIF in Word. Don’t worry, modern versions of the MS Word editor support inserting different formats of images or other elements.

In this guide you will find instructions on how to insert a GIF into Word. Adding an animated GIF to MS Word has been tested on Word 2021 and Word 2019 versions running on Windows 11 and Windows 10 operating systems.

The necessary animated images can be found on specialized sections of search engines: Google Pictures, Yandex Pictures, on specialized sites and portals, for example, Giphy.com. You can save images to your computer from any web page on the Internet.

How to insert a GIF in Word – 1 way

First, we’ll show you how to add a GIF to Word using an image that’s on your device. You need to prepare the image in advance to insert it into the edited document.

To add a GIF image to a Word document, you will need to go through several steps:

1. Open a Word document.
2. Click the mouse cursor where you want to insert the animated GIF.
3. Enter the “Insert” tab.
4. In the Illustrations group, click the Pictures button.
5. From the drop-down menu, select “This device…” to use the animation from your computer.
6. Select the appropriate image on your PC. Select the file and then click on the “Insert” button.
7. As a result, a GIF will appear at the selected location in the Word document.
8. To launch a GIF, click on the arrow button, which can be located in the corner of the image or in the center.
9. Save the Word document on your computer.

How to insert a gif into Word – 2 way

The suggested method is almost identical to the previous one, the only difference is that you will add an animated GIF image from the Internet and not from your computer.

Do the following:

1. Click anywhere in your Word document.
2. Go to the “Insert” tab.
3. Click on the “Pictures” button in the “Illustrations” group.
4. In the menu that opens, click on “Images on the Internet …”.
5. In the Drawing for Web window, in the search field, paste the URL (link) to the image if you have one, or enter a search term such as “gif”.

The search takes place using the Bing search engine, owned by Microsoft. It should be borne in mind that not all images located on resources on the Internet are indexed by search engines. Therefore, it is not certain that the URL you need will be found.

In this case, you can use the default searched gifs provided under the Creative Commons license (free to use under certain conditions).

6. Select the GIF image, and then click on the “Insert” button.
7. As a result, the GIF image will be added to the content of the Microsoft Word document.

How to add a GIF to Word – 3 way

Now we will look at another option, how to insert a gif into a Word document, in which you can use an image from any site on the Internet. To add an animated image to a Word document, you first need to copy the GIF animation from the website to your computer, and then paste this picture in the right place.

Do the following:

1. Open the web page of the website where you are going to get the GIF from, on the web.
2. We select the GIF to be added to the document.
3. Right-click on the GIF animation, select “Save Image As” (Save Image As).
4. In the save image window, give the file a name and make sure the “File Type:” field says “GIF Image”.
5. Click on the “Save” button.

After saving the GIF file on your computer, you can paste it into a document as described in the first method.

6. Place the mouse cursor in a suitable location in the Word document.
7. In the “Insert” tab, click on the “Pictures” icon, which is located in the “Illustrations” group.
8. In the context menu that opens, select “This device …”.
9. Use File Explorer to select the saved image to insert into Word.
10. As a result, our GIF appeared in Word.

How to save a document with GIF images as an MHT file

You can save a Word document with added animation as a web page archive in MHT (MHTML) format. The file in MHT format can then be viewed in a browser, also without an Internet connection.

Do the following:

1. Enter the “File” menu.
2. Open the Export tab.
3. Click Change File Type.
4. In the “Other file types” section, select “Web page in one file”.
5. In the “Save as” window, in the “File type:” field, select “Web page in one file”.
6. Run the “.mht” file on your computer.
7. A Microsoft Edge browser window will open on the desktop in Internet Explorer mode.
8. You will see the contents of the animated Word document open in the browser.

Editing an animated GIF in a Word document

The image inserted into Word can be stretched on the page to the required size, as well as set the layout options.

After adjusting the size of the GIF image on the document page, you can choose the layout options. For example, if the GIF has a transparent background, then in the Text Wrap section, click Behind Text to be able to insert your text into the GIF image.

In this case, you can add some caption to the animation.

You can also insert another animated GIF image into the GIF, and then turn on the simultaneous animation of these two objects.

Article Conclusions

While editing in Word, the user may want to insert an animated GIF into a document page to visualize an explanation of a process or add flair. Modern versions of Microsoft Word support the ability to insert GIF animations into document pages. You can use an image from your computer or one added from the Internet.