How to Combine MS Word Orientations

Portrait orientation, shown here, is standard; landscape mode rotates pages 90 degrees.

Normally, page orientation --- landscape or portrait --- affects an entire document in Microsoft Word. You could use section breaks to define sections and assign them specific page layouts, including different margins, page orientation, and even page backgrounds and borders, but that's a multistep process and therefore unnecessarily complicated. If all you need to do is mix up page orientation in various spots in a document, Microsoft Word provides a simpler way.

Instructions

1. Open or create a new document in Microsoft Word.

2. Use "Page Layout" tab buttons such as "Margins" and "Orientation" to set the layout you want as the default for the document. For example, if you have a 20-page document and want 15 pages to print with landscape (horizontal) orientation, set the document to landscape. Portrait mode is Word's default, so you can skip this step if you want the document to default to portrait orientation.

3. Select the text whose orientation you want to change.

4. Click "Orientation" in the "Page Layout" tab to change the selected text's orientation.

5. Repeat Steps 3 and 4 as necessary to switch page orientation for other portions of the document.

Tips & Warnings

• Word cannot combine two page orientations on one page; the text blocks you select for different orientation will appear on their own pages.

• To rotate some text on a page while leaving the rest of the page as it was, insert a text box and rotate the box using Picture Tools.

References

• Microsoft Office: Rotate Page Orientation Between Portrait and Landscape in Word 2010
• Microsoft Office: Rotate or Flip a Picture, Shape, Text Box, or WordArt