Why a single Orientation button is not enough
Word's orientation setting normally applies to an entire document at once, because portrait and landscape are properties of a section, not of an individual page. A document with no manual section breaks is just one long section, which is why changing orientation without first inserting breaks flips every page at once.
Typical use case
This is most useful for wide tables, charts, or spreadsheets embedded in an otherwise portrait report β rotating only the page that holds the wide content keeps it readable without switching the whole document to landscape.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do headers and footers carry over across the section break?
By default each new section can inherit the previous section's header and footer, but the "Link to Previous" setting controls this, so check it if page numbers or headers look different than expected after adding a landscape section.
Does this work the same way in Google Docs?
No. Google Docs does not support mixed page orientation within a single document as of 2026; that requires a workaround with separate documents, or using Word or LibreOffice instead.