Page Numbers on Landscape Pages

This is another situation where using section breaks is appropriate. It is assumed that the page numbers have already been added for the entire paper at this point, and the pages have not yet been changed to landscape orientation.

  • Add a section break after the last line of the page preceding the landscape page.
  • Add a section break after the last line of the landscape page, or if multiple pages, the last page of the series.
  • Open the header/footer for the first page of the new section and click on “Link to previous” thereby breaking that connection. Do this in both the head and footer.
  • Go to the header/footer of the section which follows the new section and do the same.
  • Go back to the first page of the new section, select Orientation from the Layout tab and change to landscape. This should change all pages in this new section to the landscape orientation, without affecting the sections on either side.
  • With the header/footer open, choose Page number from the Design tab and select page margins. (What you choose from here will depend on where you have chosen to situate the page numbers for the rest of the paper. We will use bottom center for this exercise.) Choose Large left. This will place a large number in the left side margin, in the center.
  • Highlight the page number and change the size, and the font to match that of the body text.
  • On the Format tab, select Text direction, rotate 90° clockwise.
  • Remove original page number in the header or footer section.
  • Close the header/footer. Your page number should now be in the correct position and should have retained the correct sequence.

The main thing to strive for is to have the page number oriented so that if you were to rotate the page back to portrait orientation, the number will be in the same location, with the same orientation as those on the portrait pages.