An MVP is a user like you, not an employee of Microsoft. Please don't
blame us for things that don't work the way you want it, because we
don't make the product!

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]
--------------
http://pschmid.net
***
Office 2007 RTM Issues: http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/11/13/80
Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh (B2TR):
http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/09/18/43
***
Customize Office 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/customize
RibbonCustomizer Add-In: http://pschmid.net/office2007/ribboncustomizer
OneNote 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/onenote
***
Subscribe to my Office 2007 blog: http://pschmid.net/blog/feed

"cheryl" wrote in message
:

Microsoft no longer supports the anmation file format "GIF" in their new
Office Suite. I have noticed it doesn't function in Outlook and I expect it
won't function in Word either.

It was explained to me the Microsoft Office 2007 was designed with the
business user in mind and this group suggested the functionality of "GIF's"
and I am guessing "SWF's" and similar files be disabled.

I submitted that Dell, Gateway and other manufacturers of hardware promote
Microsoft Office as suite of choice and therefore it is in many homes across
the world.

With all this in mind, if you would wish to see Gif's, Swf's and other HTML
file formats supported in Word and Outlook, please tell Microsoft. Reply to
this thread, post incident reports, or begin your own thread.

Thank you for your support.

Cheryl

Microsoft's MVP response to my initial query as to why GIF's were not
animated in the 2007 version of Office....

Why? Two reasons: security and simplicity. Microsoft has shifted the
rendering engine for Outlook mail messages from Internet Explorer to Word, a
decision likely to please security-conscious administrators and users
everywhere. Consolidating the rendering of all formats of Outlook messages
into one engine, Word, greatly improves both general support for the mail
editor/reader and extensibility. As part of that process, decisions had to be
made on what level of HTML support to provide, given the resources available
in the Office 2007 product development cycle. More consistent CSS support
made the cut; animated GIFs apparently didn't, perhaps because of technical
limitations related to the use of Word as the rendering engine rather than IE.

You can make a suggestion via this community forums web site that Microsoft
restore animated GIF support in a future update for Outlook 2007. Or, you can
file a formal support incident with Microsoft. Either way, I would not expect
this decision to change unless there is a vast groundswell of opinion from
Microsoft customers. Animated GIFs seem relatively low on the list of
features that most users want to see in Outlook. I personally will not miss
them at all.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003
http://www.turtleflock.com/olconfig/index.htm
and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers
http://www.outlookcode.com/jumpstart.aspx