Insert Animated GIF into Powerpoint 2013

Note: doesn't work for PowerPoint 2003, only for new pptx files (since 2007)

Seems like relative paths are supported, they are just not straightforward to implement. For example if your Powerpoint presentation is in the MyFiles folder, and the MyMovie.avi is in the Media folder inside MyFiles. The trick is to edit the xml files inside the Powerpoint file:

• Make a copy of your presentation as Presentation.pptx (just to keep the original safe).
• Rename your Presentation.pptx file into Presentation.pptx.zip
• Open the resulting zip file by clicking on it.
• It will open as a folder. Inside it, go to ppt, then slides, then _rels
• You will see files called slide1.xml.rels etc.
• Copy (drag and drop) all those to another place, outside the archive.
• Now open the file corresponding to the number of your slide with video with some editor (for example, Notepad).
• Look for the line that says something like: Target="file:///C:\MyFiles\Media\MyMovie.avi"
• If your Powerpoint presentation is in the MyFiles folder, and the MyMovie.avi is in the Media folder inside MyFiles, then change the above line to: Target="Media\MyMovie.avi"
• Save the slide1.xml.rels file (or whatever number it was), then drag it back to that archive (that is actually a Powerpoint file), and then rename the archive back to Presentation.pptx
• This is it. Now you should be able to carry around the folder MyFiles with the presentation and with the Media folder inside it that contains your video.

Works for me on Windows 7.

Good luck!

Use Camstudio. It's free, and it makes a video of your desktop, and whatever you choose to display.

So... start recording, record a short video of the animation, then edit the video and crop out everything you don't need. There. You've now got a video you can either embed in your presentation, or convert to an Animated GIF file.

EDIT Ok, so you want to embed the AVI file you made of this into the presentation. According to Microsoft...

Method 4: Insert the movie as a package

You can insert a movie file as a package in a PowerPoint presentation. To do this, follow these steps:

On the Insert menu, click Object.

Click Create new, and then click Package under Object type.

When you insert a movie as a package in a PowerPoint presentation, the movie file is kept inside a package that is embedded in the presentation. If you move the presentation to another location, the package is also moved to this location.

This method is the only way that you can embed a movie into a PowerPoint presentation. A package is an OLE2 wrapper object that embeds an OLE stream into a file. This file registers itself as a Packager object. When the Packager object is opened, the contents are read. Then, the appropriate extension verb is called. Typically, an .avi file is verb-activated with Windows Media Player.

You may want to use this option if you are not concerned about the size of the PowerPoint presentation or about the speed at which the presentation will play. When you use this method, make sure that all the content is in one file. If you use this method to insert larger .avi files, the computer may experience performance issues.

Movie playback

To make the Packager object function in a presentation, follow these steps:

Right-click the inserted object, and then click Action Settings.

Click Object Actions. Then, click Activate Contents in the Object Actions list.

When you click the Packager object in a presentation, the movie is played back in a separate window above the presentation.

That's from this Microsoft Article

Now, if you'd rather convert the AVI to a GIF file to make embedding it easier, you can use an online converter like Zamzar.