Hi all,



I currently have a big document to print out which I have created in Microsoft Word. All the pages are set to landscape mode however when I have done a test print of a few pages, it comes out so that the header (hole marks for lever arch file) is at the right side of the paper and I wish for it to be printed out so that the header is always at the left side of the paper.

Hope that everyone understands that!

Thanks!

I too have this problem, and cannot find a simple solution.

My fall-back solution is to convert to PDF and rotate the landscape pages. This is a bit of a nuisance since when editing I have to go back to the Word version and then repeat the PDF step before printing. However, when distributing by e-mail I know that I don’t irritate people by forcing them to read a document upside down.

I would still like to have an elegant Word solution - eg “Move landscape heading to the left/right”, so if you hit on something, please let me know.

Since you are using landscape orientation for all pages, you should be able to configure your printer to accomplish this.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

My solution to the problem, having failed to find a resolution within Word (or the Word community) is as follows.

First save the document as a PDF file. Then, having opened it with Acrobat (I hope you have Acrobat) select all the landscape pages which you want to reverse (ie end up with the landscape header on the spine edge of the document). Once selected click on Tools, then click on Rotate and choose the option “Counterclockwise 90 degrees”, and click OK.

As if by magic all the selected pages will flip 90 degrees and you will be able to print out your document. Any non-selected pages either in portrait or landscape mode will remain unchanged.

Good luck.

PS: I note that you first posted your problem in 2010, so maybe you have found a more elegant solution in Word. If so I’d like to hear it.

Perhaps Stephan and I do not understand your problem. Left and right side is problematic terminology. Try long side and short side and then left, right, top and bottom to further describe what you are trying to do.

With all pages landscape, Word has no problems reserving a binding area on the short side of the page. It is unusual, although not unheard of, to bind landscape documents this way. That is, the left (short) edge of the odd-numbered pages has extra room; the right (short) edge of even-numbered pages likewise. I expect that this is what Stefan meant when he said you should have no problem. (This is the same kind of mirrored margins used in portrait-orientation.) The standard mirrored margins command fails with documents containing mixed orientations.

Anything different from this, or in documents with mixed-orientation pages requires use of different even and odd headers/footers with spacing reserved in those. See Mirrored Margins with Landscape for a discussion of what is involved.

I think swifty2010 put it in simple terms. What he wants is to have a landscape page with its header on the long side where the lever arch file holes are punched. Word does not do this – as a default it orients the landscape page so that the footer gets the holes.

If you have a thick document with mixed portrait and landscape sections and with the landscape sections hosting large tables it’s more convenient to have the headers on the hole-punched side. You can then flip the table pages more easily – try it.

Once in PDF I can use Acrobat to turn the landscape pages – but I had hoped to be able to do the same trick within Word for a complete landscape section. It’s not a question of margins or binding areas, it’s only an orientation issue.

I used to have a boat – and port and starboard certainly beats left and right. Perhaps there’s a printer’s equivalent of port and starboard?

I agree we could use an equivalent to port (originally larboard) and starboard. I happen to have BinderTek binders with holes on the short edge, including some for ledger-size paper.

The workarounds in Mirrored Margins with Landscape will do what you want, let you have a binding (hole) area on the long side. It takes some fiddling, which is part of the reason I recommend doing it using space-before and space-after formatting in custom Paragraph Styles rather than using TextBoxes or Frames.

Thanks, I'll have a go.

I've added a demonstration document here.

Thank you for the link. I can see that this will accommodate double sided printing and allow for different headers and footers for odd and even pages.

However, I have a single-side only printer and when I print out the supplied example document I still get the landscape text running in the wrong direction.

My current document will be stapled/hole punched as a portrait document so when saying “left” I mean the spine/hole-punched long side of the paper, and “right” is the loose or flipping long edge.

The portrait pages are fine, but Word prints out the document with the landscape headers always on the right. The text reads, as one would expect line by line from header to footer.

What I’m looking for is for the header to be printed on the left side of the page, and for the text to read line by line from header to the footer on the right side of the page.

I can achieve this by manually turning all the landscape pages before binding the document, but this of course is no good if I am e-mailing the document.
I can also achieve the same result by converting the document to PDF and using Acrobat to rotate the landscaped pages.

But I had hoped to find a Word solution.

Many thanks for all your help – I feel a bit guilty about taking so much of your time.

OK, you are changing parameters again. At first we had a document with only landscape orientation.

You have a document with landscape and portrait sections?

Are you saying that when your document prints, your landscape pages are upside down for binding? That is what comes out of the printer in landscape mode on the left side is the bottom of the page rather than the top? And you are asking for help with that?

This is rotating the entire page, not changing headers and footers. I'm not sure it can be done in Word. It might be something that can be done with printer command codes that you could get from your printer manufacturer, though.

Here is a Google search for "printer command code to rotate page 180 degrees"

Absent such codes, print each section separately and manually rotate them.

In anticipation that this is what is required, I am changing the heading of this topic so that those who might know more about this will get involved.

Pending answers to those questions...

If you are not printing duplex, do not turn on mirrored margins.

Each section can have its own margin settings.

Follow-up on printer codes.

• Command codes are printer-specific, but some may be general.
• Word sends printer command codes using the Print Field.
• Once you have such a field, you could save it as a building block or AutoText entry.
• Remember that you may need to repeat the code to rotate 180 degrees at the beginning of portrait sections and then again when you switch back to landscape.

PCL (HP) code:
<Esc>&a#P (#=180) Print Direction: 180 degree ccw rotation


Page Orientation
Designates the logical page position with respect to the physical page.
? & l # O
# = 0 - Portrait
1 - Landscape
2 - Reverse Portrait
3 - Reverse Landscape
Print Direction
Rotates the logical page coordinate system counterclockwise in 90 degree
increments with respect to the orientation of the current logical page.
? & a # P
# = Degrees of rotation (0, 90, 180, 270)

Many other printers including Richoh and Lexmark use PCL as well.


Orientation Commands Print Direction Commands

Sorry but you are confusing me with swifty2010. I have never said that my document was purely landscape.

My original post on 16 Feb was called Landscape header to left side. “I have landscape sections of a document which have the header on the right and the footer on the left. How can I change this to have the header on the left and the footer on the right?” See more details in my discussion with Stefan Blom.

I was pleased to hit on the Acrobat rotation method – and this is why I posted my advice on swifty2010’s thread.

Now I see that you have a more sophisticated Word solution. I don’t know anything about PCL but I’ll have a look.

Thanks for your help – and your patience.

Remember, your printer must use PCL for the commands to work. This is sort of doing an end-run around the printer driver.