By default, Microsoft Word orients pages to portrait view. While this is fine for the most part, you may have pages or groups of pages that look better in landscape view. Here are two ways to achieve this.
Regardless of which method you use, note that if the text extends to an additional page due to rotation, the new page will also be landscaped.
Flip a specific page horizontally by inserting a separator
You can use section breaks to set a page or group of pages to landscape orientation, but depending on where those pages are located in the document, how to do this is slightly different.
Enable show/hide edit markers
Unless you change the settings, section breaks are invisible pagination controls and can cause confusion if you forget where to add them. To make it visible, click the Show/Hide Edit Markers icon in the Paragraph group of the Home tab.
Reposition the first page or pages
Place the cursor at the end of the page you want to change to landscape orientation. In the Layout tab, click Separator, and then select Next. This will insert the next page section break in the document.
Place your cursor on the first page (before the section break you just added), in the Layout tab, click Orientation, and then select Landscape.
This will change the first page or set of pages (depending on where you add the section break) to landscape orientation.
Rearrange the pages in the middle of the document
If you have three or more pages and need to change the middle page to landscape page, place your cursor at the beginning of the first page you want to change. Then, like above, in the Layout tab, click on "Separator" and "Next". This inserts a section break at the beginning of the page you want to redirect.
Next, place your cursor at the beginning of the new section you just created, go to the Layout tab, click on Orientation, and then click on Landscape. This changes the current page and all subsequent pages to landscape view.
However, since you only want some of the pages in the middle of the document to be landscape, you need to add a second page break at the end of the landscape section.
Then, click anywhere behind this new page break and use the Orientation option in the Layout tab to turn the rest of the pages portrait, leaving the pages between the page breaks in landscape view.
A shrunken Microsoft Word document with a landscape page between two vertical pages
Reposition the last page or pages
To change the end of the document to landscape, simply place your cursor at the beginning of the last section, add the next page section break here, and change the orientation accordingly (using the same steps as above).
Tip: To remove section breaks, place the cursor in front of the paragraph mark (¶) and press the delete key.
Use the page setup to change a specific page to landscape
In Word, another way to convert a page or multiple adjacent pages from portrait to landscape is to select the content and turn the pages manually. This method works with text, images, tables, and other items on the page.
Select all the items on the page that you want to rotate 90 degrees. If you have text, drag the cursor across all the text. If you have an image, table, chart, or other type of object, just select it.
In the Layout tab, click the arrow in the lower-right corner of the Page Setup group.
In the Page Setup dialog box that opens, confirm that you're on the Margins tab. In the "Disability direction" section, select "Landscape". Then, at the bottom, change the "Apply to" drop-down option to "Selected text" and click "OK".
When the dialog box closes, you'll see the selected page change to a landscape view.
While this method is the easiest, you may encounter difficulties. For example, if you have an image or table surrounded by text, changing the orientation of the page may change its layout. Also, if you want to add more horizontal pages to your document, you may have a hard time. The most structurally safest way to change the orientation of a page is through the first method described at the top of this article.