How to make a Google Doc landscape or portrait

How to make a Google Doc landscape or portrait

Have you been wondering how to make a Google Doc landscape or portrait? If so, you came to the right article. You will agree with us that most documents virtually look better in portrait orientation rather than in landscape.

That’s probably why most documents are formatted in the portrait orientation.

There are, however, times you need extra horizontal space to display a large table, graph, or map.

Google Docs is accessible, free of charge, and easy to use for anyone with a Gmail account. It makes word processing easy and convenient.

In Google Docs, you can create a new document with either the portrait or the landscape layout. You can even change the page orientation in an existing document.

In this article, you’ll learn how to change the orientation of a document on Google Docs. You will learn how to change to landscape in Google Docs.

You’ll also learn how you can do this on your desktop or mobile phone with just a few clicks.

Table of Contents

  1. How to make a Google Doc landscape or portrait
    1. How to make Google Docs landscape or portrait on a mobile device
  2. Wrap Up

How to make a Google Doc landscape or portrait

Follow the steps below to change to landscape in Google Docs:

  • Open the Google Doc you wish to adjust;
  • Click on “File” in the upper left corner, then “Page Setup” in the menu;
How to make a Google Doc landscape or portrait

  • In the Page setup dialog box, there are two options for the page orientation: “Portrait” and “Landscape”;
How to make a Google Doc landscape or portrait

  • Choose either, then click “OK” on the bottom-right and “Exit”.

Once you do that, your entire document will change its orientation. You should note that the change in page orientation can affect the original layout of the text and media in your document.

It can also affect existing tables, graphs, images, and other elements. You might need to adjust before saving or sharing it.

The only thing you cannot do in Google Docs is to change the orientation of a single page in the middle of a document. The whole Google Doc has to be in either landscape or portrait orientation.

For instance, you cannot rotate one page to landscape while having the others remaining in portrait. This is only possible in Microsoft Word.

How to make Google Docs landscape or portrait on a mobile device

If you’re using Google Docs on a mobile device, changing the page orientation is also pretty easy. It is, however, slightly different from the desktop.

We have used Google Docs on Android for this tutorial, and the process should be similar on iOS.

Follow these steps to adjust page orientation on your Android phone.

  • Open the Google Docs mobile app. to view the document you want to adjust;
  • Tap the pencil icon in the bottom-right;
  • Tap the “three vertical dots” at the upper right of the screen;
  • Go down the side menu and choose “Page setup”;
How to make a Google Doc landscape or portrait

  • In the Page setup menu, tap “Orientation”.

In the Orientation section, you can switch your document between portrait and landscape at the top of this window.

How to make a Google Doc landscape or portrait 3

  • Make your choice and then click “OK” to apply your selection. Chose the orientation you want to use and then tap the arrow at the top left to go back to the Page setup menu.

If you’re changing your document to landscape orientation, you’ll note that it looks just like it did before.

You’ll need to view your Google Doc in “Print layout” mode to see the new orientation. Google Docs will prompt you to view the changes in the “Print Layout” view.

Go back to the menu, tap the three vertical dots in the upper-right corner, and click on the “Print layout” toggle. Now you can view your document in its landscape mode.

As on the desktop version of Google Docs, it’s impossible to change only part of a document orientation. So if you’re used to Word, you’ll have to accept that limitation.

You can’t insert a single landscape page in an otherwise portrait-oriented document – something that would help at times.

At this stage, you should have everything you need to change the page orientation of a Google Doc on both desktop and mobile devices.

Instead of repeating this process every time you create a new document, it’s better to change the default document orientation.

For example, if you want all blank documents to open in a particular page orientation, click the “Set as default” button on your page’s setup options.

The next time you open a new document, it’ll be in whatever default orientation you set.

Wrap Up

We hope this guide helps you to change the page orientation in Google Docs. The landscape is a wide format you can use for creating documents heavy on media and other wide page elements. Try this format for invoices or receipts to compare multiple columns next to each other.

You can always reverse the process if you want to have the content in any orientation by following the above steps.

Now you know you can easily change the orientation of a Google Doc, just like in Microsoft Word, but unlike Word, you cannot have mixed orientations.

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