How to Shift Between Portrait and Landscape Orientations in a Microsoft 2010 Document

© 2011 Ugur Akinci
There are times when you may want to shift from Portrait to Landscape orientation in a Microsoft 2010 document. This happens for example when you need to insert a table that is too wide to fit into a Portrait page.
With an application like FrameMaker which uses master pages, you’d simply change the master page assigned to that specific page. But MS Word does not use any master pages. Therefore, this is how you do it:
To change the orientation of EVERY page in your document in a wholesale fashion:
(1) Select the PAGE LAYOUT tab in the Ribbon.
(2) Click he ORIENTATION button to display the drop-down menu.
(3) Select either PORTRAIT or LANDSCAPE. This will shift ALL your pages to the selected page orientation.
To change the orientation of ONLY SELECTED TEXT in your document:
(1) Select your text (or Table, image, etc.).
(2) Select the PAGE LAYOUT tab in the Ribbon.
(3) Click MARGINS > CUSTOM MARGINS… to display the PAGE SETUP dialog box:

(4) Select the PORTRAIT or LANDSCAPE orientation.
(5) From the APPLY TO drop-down list, select SELECTED TEXT option, and then click OK.
TIP: To insert a new-orientation page at a point where there is no text to select, select the BLANK SPACE nevertheless. If you do not select something, MS Word does not display the SELECTED TEXT option in the APPLY TO drop-down list.