Word – Rotate Text and Table in Portrait Page in Word 2010

microsoft wordpage-numbersrotate

I have a portrait page that looks like the following:

Table 1.

Title of Table

[][][][][][][][][]

[][][][][][][][][]

Page 3 of 8

How can I rotate the above text and table 90 degrees counter-clockwise but NOT rotate "Page 3 of 8" so that "Table 1" is on the bottom-left of the portrait page and "Page 3 of 8" is on the bottom footer?

Or, if I change the page layout to landscape, how can I preserve a portrait header and footer?

This is the same question as here, except the solution provided requires a lot of manual tweaking and is not feasible for adjusting multiple pages. Is there a better solution?

Best Answer

There is no way to rotate a table in Microsoft Word. The closest alternative is to transpose the table to make it look like it has been rotated. If this is suitable for you then this could be the solution.

Otherwise you can achieve this by simply creating the page with the table as a landscape page but treating it as portrait when it's printed.

You need to do something like this:

  1. Change the page setup for the current page to be landscape orientation. Use section breaks to stop the rest of the document from going landscape.

    • A quick way to do this is:
      1. type some text (it can be as little as a space character),
      2. select it,
      3. open the “Page Setup” dialog box,
      4. go to the “Margins” tab (it should start there by default),
      5. click “Landscape” under “Orientation”,
      6. choose “Selected text” from the “Apply to” drop-down menu,
      7. and click “OK”.

    (This creates the section breaks for you.)

  2. Make sure the table and its title are at the top left of the landscape page. This will actually be the bottom left part of the page when looking at the page in portrait.

  3. Add a text box in the left margin.

    1. Type “Page PAGE of NUMPAGES”,
    2. select “PAGE” and press Ctrl+F9,
    3. select “NUMPAGES” and press Ctrl+F9.
      The text should now look something like “Page { PAGE } of { NUMPAGES }” because you have created fields that will display as the current page number and the page count.
    4. Select the entire phrase and press F9.  The text should now look like “Page 3 of 8”, because F9 updates fields, causing them to display their current value.
    5. Change the text direction in the text box to vertical, so it will appear normal (right-side-up) when the page is viewed as a portrait page.
    6. Adjust the size and position of the text box as you desire.
      • Note: if you’re going to do this on multiple pages, you can copy the entire text box and paste it into other pages.
  4. You may want to disable the real page footer, if any (because it will appear in landscape orientation).

When the document is printed turn the landscape page in your hands back up to portrait and the table and text will appear rotated but the footer text appears straight.

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