Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Rotating a Page of Text.

Rotating a Page of Text

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated June 9, 2018)

2

Have you ever wanted to rotate the text in your Word document 90 degrees in relation to your headers and footers? As has been discussed in other WordTips, there are a couple of ways to do this using Word's native capabilities. (You can insert a text box and rotate the text within that textbox, insert a table and rotate the text within a cell, or use WordArt.) Any of these methods can be quite cumbersome and time consuming to set up and get aligned properly.

However, if you use the fact that Microsoft started including Far East language support in Word 2000, you can rotate an entire section of text clockwise, 90 degrees to your headers and footers.

To rotate the text, follow these steps:

  1. Place a Next Page section break before and after the text you wish to rotate.
  2. Select at least one character between those section breaks, but don't select the actual section breaks. (If you don't select at least one character in the section you wish to rotate, the entire document will be rotated.)
  3. Press Alt+F11 to display the VBA Editor.
  4. Make sure the Immediate window is displayed. (It should appear at the bottom of the VBA Editor. If it doesn't, press Ctrl+G.)
  5. In the Immediate window, type the following and press Enter:
    6.      Selection.Orientation = wdTextOrientationVerticalFarEast
  6. Close the VBA Editor.

Now your text is rotated 90 degrees to your headers and footers. Your page that contains the rotated text has had its layout changed to landscape mode, as well. You can use the Page Setup dialog box to change the page to portrait mode, and the text will still be rotated on the page.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (11797) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Rotating a Page of Text.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He  is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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What is seven more than 3?

2018-06-11 11:43:10

Pamela

Very interesting, and could be useful in some of the docs I work on. However...it seems that the default rotation is 90 degrees to the right. How can it be rotated to the left? Thank you.

2018-06-11 10:56:47

Sara Bries

Thanks for this great tip. I tested it on an existing document, and found that it "flips" the text so that it is aligned to the right margin on the page. Is there a way to flip the text so that it is aligned along the left margin?

Thanks for your work!

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