How to Change the Page Orientation of a MS Word Document Page

© Ugur Akinci
Let’s say you have a portrait-orientation MS Word document but you’d like to insert a LANDSCAPE orientation page in the middle of your document to accommodate a map or a wide table.
Since MS Word does not support the “master pages” paradigm, you cannot just switch from a Portrait page template (master page) to a Landscape page template easily.
This still remains to be one of the weakest points of MS Word and I have no idea when they’ll fix it.
But to accomplish this task, you unfortunately have to go through the following steps:
1) Place your cursor to the very end of the page PRECEDING the one the orientation of which you’d like to change.
For example, if you’d like to change the orientation of Page 2, place your cursor somewhere at the end of Page 1.

 
2)  Go to the Page Layout tab and select the Next Page section break from the Breaks drop-down menu:

 
This will insert a Section Break marker to the end of the preceding page (make sure your Show/Hide Paragraph Marks button is selected on the Home tab):

3) While your cursor is in Page 2 (or the page the orientation of which you’d like to switch to Landscape), select Page Layout tab > Orientation > Landscape. The page will now display a Landscape orientation:

 
WARNING: MS Word automatically adjusts the Header but not the Footer!
The footer now looks a bit short:

 
4) Go to Insert tab > Footer > Edit Footer and adjust your footer so that its width matches the width of the new landscape page.
5) To switch back to the Portrait orientation in the next page, place your cursor to the end of the Landscape page. Go to the Page Layout tab and select the Next Page section break from the Breaks drop-down menu .
6) Select Page Layout tab > Orientation > Portrait. The next page will now display a Portrait orientation: