Using Sections to Change Page Layout in a Word Document

By default, the entire Word document uses the same page layout (size, margins and orientation). However, we can use sections when we want some pages (even one page) to have a different page layout.

For example, you are creating a report and have a large image or table that is to be displayed in the landscape mode.

To change the page layout of document using sections, we have to:

1. Define where the section starts and ends by inserting section breaks.
   
   For example: if we want pages 3 to 5 to have a different page layout, then we add section breaks at the end of page 2 and at the end of page 5.
2. Click anywhere in pages 3 to 5 and use the Page Setup options to change the page layout.

Enabling Section Numbers in the Status Bar

When a document is divided into sections, each section is numbered sequentially from the start of the document, with the section 1 being at the start of the document, followed by section 2 and so on.

By default, when we create a document, it will have one section. As long as we do not create any other sections, all content will be in this Section 1.

Once we have created sections, we may want to know which section we are working in at any point in time. We can display the section numbers in the status bar of Microsoft Word.

To view the section numbers:

1. Right-click the status bar.
2. From the menu displayed, select Section.

Section numbers are now displayed in the status bar. By default, it displays Section: 1. Scroll through the document and wherever you click in the document, the section number remains unchanged.

Creating Sections

We have created a sample document that will be used to demonstrate using sections to change the page layout for a part of a Word document. Do download and extract the contents of the Sample_Documents_Sections_Page_Layout.ZIP file that contains 3 files:

● Sample_Document_Changing_Page_Layout.docx
● Sample_Document_Changing_Page_Layout_Solution.docx
● Sample_Image.png

1. Open Sample_Document_Changing_Page_Layout.docx. This is a sample document with 4 pages.
2. Scroll to the start of page 3. There is a placeholder for an image here.
3. Click at the start of this line, delete the placeholder text and insert the Sample_Image.png.
   

As the content in the image is not readable, we will place it on a landscape page. 

Only this image will be on a landscape page and so we need to create a separate section just for the page containing the image.

To create a section containing only the page with the image:

1. Click at the end of the second page.
2. On the Layout tab, in the Page Setup group, click Breaks, and in the displayed list, click Next Page.
   
   This inserts a section break at the end of the second page indicating that the new section begins from the next page. You can see the section break indicator at the point where your cursor was. Now the document has 2 sections.
   1. Click anywhere before the section break, that is in pages 1 and 2, and the indicator in the status bar will be Section: 1.
   2. Click anywhere after the section break, that anywhere from page 3 onwards, and the indicator in the status bar will be Section: 2.
3. Since only the image is to be in the landscape page, we need to end the section after the image. Click at the start of the paragraph that begins with “When you click Online Video….” and repeat step 2 to insert another section break.

   This inserts a section break at this point and moves the paragraph to the start of the next page. Now the document has 3 sections.

   1. Click anywhere in pages 1 and 2, and the indicator in the status bar will be Section: 1.
   2. Click anywhere in page 3, and the indicator in the status bar will be Section: 2.
   3. Click anywhere in pages 4 and 5, and the indicator in the status bar will be Section: 3.

1. 1.  

To change the page layout for section 2 which contains the image:

1. 1. Click anywhere in Section 2 (page 3).
   2. On the Layout tab, in the Page Setup group, click Orientation, and in the displayed list, click Landscape. The page with the image changes to a landscape orientation. 
      
      
   3. Resize and position the image as required.
      
   4. Scroll to pages 1 and 2 or pages 4 and 5. They will still be in the portrait orientation.