So you’re all excited… you just installed Outlook 2007 and you think it’s great… until your friends start forwarding you all those funny e-mails we all love to receive, but you can’t see the animation in animated GIF images.

This is not a bug in Outlook 2007, but rather a feature (that I am sure most will find rather frustrating).

As per Microsoft:

Other Unsupported Web-Related Features
The following is a list of all other Web-related features that Word 2007 does not support:

  • Animated GIF images. Only a static representation of the GIF image shows.
  • Flash. Only a red “X” shows in the area where the flash would display.

For full details please see:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa338201.aspx

Currently there is no known quick solution for this, but one workaround is to save the e-mail message somewhere on your hard drive and then open it using your favourite browser.

Here’s how you do it:

  • Select the message, don’t open it
  • Click file, save
  • It should be in htm / html format by default
  • Browse to a folder where you can open the mail from (I always use my desktop)
  • Double click the file on the desktop and voila your message displays in your default browser (typically Internet Explorer) and you can see all the animations.
  • Once your done reading (and hopefully laughing), close Internet Explorer
  • Rember to delete the file and folder created by saving the message – you don’t want to waste disc space or clutter your desktop