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How to Set Landscape or Portrait Page Orientation in Word 2016

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Updated:  
2016-03-26 07:22:51
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From The Book:  
Word 2010 For Dummies
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An aspect of page size in Word 2016 documents is whether the page is oriented vertically or horizontally. Page orientation could be set by adjusting the page size, but it's much easier to change the page orientation. Follow these steps:

  1. Click the Layout tab.

  2. Click the Orientation button.

    The Orientation button is illustrated here. It has two items on its menu: Portrait and Landscape.

    image0.jpg
  3. Choose Portrait to set the page vertically or Landscape to set the page horizontally.

Word shifts the orientation for every page in your document. This doesn't mean that the text is sideways, but rather that the text prints wide on a page.

Make the decision to have your document in landscape orientation before you do any extensive formatting. This orientation affects paragraph formatting, which may require you to adjust the document's margins.

  • Page-orientation changes affect the entire document unless you split your document into sections. In this case, the change applies to only the current section.

  • Scientists who study such things have determined that human reading speed slows drastically when people must scan a long line of text, which happens when you use landscape orientation. Reserve landscape orientation for printing lists, graphics, and tables for which portrait page orientation is too narrow.

  • Landscape printing is ideal for using multiple columns of text.

  • If you just want sideways text without turning the page, use a text box.

About This Article

This article is from the book: 

About the book author:

Dan Gookin has been writing about technology for 20 years. He has contributed articles to numerous high-tech magazines and written more than 90 books about personal computing technology, many of them accurate.
He combines his love of writing with his interest in technology to create books that are informative and entertaining, but not boring. Having sold more than 14 million titles translated into more than 30 languages, Dan can attest that his method of crafting computer tomes does seem to work.
Perhaps Dan’s most famous title is the original DOS For Dummies, published in 1991. It became the world’s fastest-selling computer book, at one time moving more copies per week than the New York Times number-one best seller (although, because it’s a reference book, it could not be listed on the NYT best seller list). That book spawned the entire line of For Dummies books, which remains a publishing phenomenon to this day.
Dan’s most recent titles include PCs For Dummies, 9th Edition; Buying a Computer For Dummies, 2005 Edition; Troubleshooting Your PC For Dummies; Dan Gookin’s Naked Windows XP; and Dan Gookin’s Naked Office. He publishes a free weekly computer newsletter, “Weekly Wambooli Salad,” and also maintains the vast and helpful Web site www.wambooli.com.