I'm working with a boilerplate report "template" that uses portrait orientation by default but might have a section added that uses landscape orientation. When a landscape section is added, I need a way for the right margin to adjust automatically so the right-aligned page number and logo are always the same distance from the right edge of the document. Note: I put template in quotation marks because we don't use it as a true template as Microsoft designed. It's really just a boilerplate macro-enabled document that various departments use as a basis for their customized documents.

Use the alignment tabs.
Alignment Tabs


BTW: Why on Earth are the not using a real template?

"Why on Earth are they not using a real template?" -- For various security-related reasons, the company has an unusual configuration of Office products, which limits certain functions. Also, I'm not sure the corporate decision makers are familiar with how templates are supposed to work.

The right-alignment tab doesn't automatically move to the right edge on landscape pages in my document.

What is it aligned to? Page Margin or Paragraph Indent?
Margins and Indents - Ribbon

Some brave soul should point out that the are restricting productivity and increasing the opportunity for mistakes by using documents instead of templates.

• Workgroup Templates in Microsoft Word
• Understanding Styles in Microsoft Word

That sounds as though you’ve used a right-aligned tab rather than an alignment tab. Alignment tabs are only available in headers and footers, can’t be applied as part of a style, and are accessed from the header/footer tab of the ribbon, which is visible only when editing a header or footer.

I do this by putting the header and footer content into a table. The table can be configured to be 100% width which allows it to adapt automatically to different page widths. You might want two or three columns in that table depending on whether you need left and right alignment or left/centre/right alignment. The first column gets content left aligned, the last column gets content right aligned.

The trick is to remember that the 'link to previous' setting overrides the width of the table so if you change from portrait to landscape (or vice versa) then you can duplicate the header content by turning on the 'link to previous' but then you need to turn it off again to allow the table to adapt to the different width.

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

OMG Italophile - I've never seen that before. I have no idea how long that has been a feature of Word but I can see that is going to be worth exploring further because it lets me retain the 'link to previous' setting and reduces complexity considerably.

I still think that tables are useful especially where logos are involved to give us more control on vertical alignment of left/right sides but that alignment tab is going to be handy for sure.

Thanks for teaching me something new today

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

Andrew: Alignment Tabs
Introduced with the Ribbon in Office 2007.
Only available in headers or footers unless added to QAT or keyboard shortcut. It shows up as Insert Alignment Tab.

Thank you, Charles Kenyon and Italophile. Much appreciated.