Landscape Table on a Portrait Page (2007 SP1)

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I’ve browsed through some of the posts, and it seems like this can’t be done. But I want to double-check.

I have a table that is already prepared in landscape format on a landscape page. The header and footer are along the long side of the page.

I would like it to appear as a landscape table on a portrait page (with the header and footer along the short edge).

It seems like the easiest thing to do with an already existing table is to retype the whole thing. Am I right?

If so, what is the best way to do this? With a table inside a text box, or something else?

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You can rotate text in a table (Format | Text Direction…)

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But that doesn’t rotate the table, does it?

My main concern is that the table is already formatted and looks nice. I just want a portrait page with portrait headers and a table running top to bottom instead of side-to-side.

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You could put in a section contaiing one landscape page with your table in it, then cheat to get it looking as though the headers and footers are the same as in the portrait pages. Maybe put a text box sideways along the short edges of the page. See also the suggestions at http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/LandscapeSection.htm%5B/url%5D on how to get a portrait page number and portrait headers and footers on a landscape page.

Ian

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I posted because other people will see different/better solutions.

I had looked at that page yesterday Ian, but I really like your idea of putting the headers into a text box instead of the table.

Even better, it now occurs to me that I could keep my landscape table in its own section, add a column on the left and on the right of my existing table, merge its cells, put a “fake” header and footer in them, rotate the text in those cells, and delete the real header from within that section. If it works, this solution will be best for situations in which I realize the table won’t work in portrait before I’m done with it.

Also, ultimately this will be published as a PDF, so I’ll have to see if that add any problems.

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I think that what I was suggesting and what you are talking about is the option referred to at 2.2 in the page I referred you to.

Ian

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PS – I know of no reason why it shouldn’t work just as well in WOrd 2007.

Ian

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If your final product is PDF, I’d suggest an alternative approach, provided you have Acrobat Full or Capture It or some other utility that takes a clean snippet of a PDF page.

Set up the table to the proportions you want it in a scrap document. Create a PDF of the document. Using Acrobat’s image capture feature (or your screen capture utility) snip out the table. Paste it back into your target document as a graphic, rotated however you want on the final page. You could even paste the snippet into a text box or frame that carries the caption in your desired portrait orientation.

It’s not the most elegant solution, and you do need to keep track of the supplemental page bits which can be a pain. Putting the scrap bits at the end of the source document and only PDF’ing the desired page range might help keep your rotated table originals from being lost.

kbsalazar, proposal drone

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