I did try that. First, I created a series of section breaks with different headers/footers for portrait/landscape -- and defined the page numbering as I wanted, etc.

I copied only the one section break (and Heading 1 if it was to be a new section) and made that the autotext. The problem with that approach was that the page orientation and page numbers (start at 1 or continuous) didn't hold, and I had to use the Word orientation and format page numbering tools, which I had put on the QAT, to straighten them out -- and sometimes had to reinsert the headers and footers. With the tools, it was easy to do, but I wanted to make it easier for the authors.

Next I tried creating two section breaks and formatting the first one as I wanted. This worked better, as it retained the orientation, headers/footers and page numbering. But that extra page got confusing -- even to me who is designing it.

Do you have any suggestions as to how I should approach putting this together?