How to Insert a Proper Page Break for Changing Page Orientation in MS Word

By Ugur Akinci

In MS Word, not all page breaks are the same. The two different types of page breaks have different repercussions when it comes to changing your page layout in mid-stream.
You have to be careful what kind of a page break you are inserting if you would like to change your page layout orientation from Portrait to Landscape or vice-versa.
Imagine you have a document like the one below:
(Click the images to enlarge them)

We would like to insert a page break just before the table and then change the table page into a Landscape layout since the table si too wide for a Portrait page. Here are the two methods to accomplish that.

METHOD 1: Using Insert (tab) > Page Break command:

Place your cursor right before the table title and click Insert > Page break. This will insert a page break right before the table and push the table to the next page:

If you toggle the Show/Hide button (Home tab) you’ll see that this kind of page break is represented by a SINGLE DOTTED line.
Now let’s select Page Layout > Orientation > Landscape to switch the table page into a LANDSCAPE orientation and see what happens:

As you can see ALL PAGES switch to the LANDSCAPE orientation and that’s not what we want.
We want the previous page remain in PORTRAIT orientation and only the table page switch to LANDSCAPE orientation.
Let’s try the second method.

METHOD 2: Page Layout (tab) > Breaks > Next Page command:

Select the Page Layout (tab) > Breaks > Next Page command to insert a page break before the table. Notice how the page break this time is represented by DOUBLE DOTTED LINES:

Now when we switch the table page into a layout orientation by selecting Page Layout > Orientation > Landscape, only the table page switches into a LANDSCAPE orientation and the previous page remains in PORTRAIT orientation — which is exactly what we wanted!