I'm not going to say that it is impossible but I spent the better part of a day trying everything I knew to get an animated gif to activate in Word...and, I'm not a novice. I have been using Word since ver. 2.0 (that, for you kids, is right after they did away with chisels on stone).
It appears that the only MS Office application that can run an animated gif is Power Point.
There are different answers for that question, but I will give an example. "I want to animate that picture." Perhaps I do not understand your question. I do not recall the word "animate" a animal life related word. The definition for it is: To make a picture or painting move. Or perhaps there is another definition for it. Well, this is the best I can do.
a picture
the root words for animate
You cant do that directly from Word, Word cant save file as picture, press Print Screen on keyboard, then Paste in picture editor program like MS Paint
Right click the picture with your mouse. Go to the option copy and click it. On the word document go to edit at the top left. Click paste.
inanimate
No it is not a picture file. It is a word processing document, covering versions of Microsoft Word 2007 and the later versions.
The notion of living beings as animate forms falls by the wayside.
You can right click and Copy their Picture. Then save it somewhere like a Word Document!
Open Word, and use the Insert -> Picture -> From File option to put 1 or more GIF files into a word document, and then save it.
Do the same as you would do with a picture, i works the same.
Illustration is a picture in a book, magazine, or other publication or document.