How to Make Google Docs Landscape

Many people think Google Docs is limited when it comes to style and format. But the truth is it's very easy to make Google Docs landscape format.

You just need to know which menu options will change the document format to landscape. It's even possible to make landscape formatting the default format for all of your Google Docs documents.

Unfortunately, you can't have portrait and landscape pages in a single Google document. See below for some tips and tricks to maybe get what you are after.

Making Google Docs Landscape Format

If you already have an existing document saved in Google Docs and you want to reformat it into landscape, the following steps will do that.

With your document open in Google Docs, select File from the menu and select Page setup.
In the Page setup window, enable Landscape. this will automatically deselect Portrait mode. Here, you can also adjust your margins if you'd like.
Select OK to close the Page setup window and return to your document displayed in Landscape mode.
Select and drag the boxes at the corner or side of any photos in the document that you want to stretch across the entire page.
When you're finished reformatting your document, Google Docs automatically saves all changes to your document.

Setting Landscape Format as Google Docs Default

If you want your documents in Google Docs to open automatically in Landscape mode, you can set Landscape as the default format.

You can do this in the step above where you're enabling Landscape mode by selecting Set as default before clicking OK to save.

Screenshot of setting Landscape as default in Google Docs

Now, any time you open a new document in Google Docs, it'll start out in Landscape mode.

If you ever want to switch it back to Portrait mode, you'll need to follow the same steps as above, but enable Portrait instead of Landscape.

Alternating Landscape and Portrait in Google Docs

Unfortunately, there's no way to alternate page formats in Google Docs.

However, there is a workaround so that if you're planning to print or convert the document to PDF, you can print pages in alternating formats.

With your document open in Google Docs, select File from the menu and select Print.
In the Print window, select Change under Destination. Select Save as PDF to change the destination to a PDF document.

If you prefer to print to a paper document instead of PDF, change the destination to your printer if you've set up Google Cloud Print.
Change the Pages selection from All to the custom pages selection below it, which allows you to enter a custom page range. Type the range of pages you want to print in the current format.
Select Save, and save the file to a location on your computer that you'll remember.

Include the page numbers in the file title so later while you're merging the documents, you'll know which pages are in each saved file.
Go through the steps in the first part of this guide to change the format of your document from Landscape mode to Portrait Mode.
Repeat steps 1 - 4 above to print the next few pages of your document in Portrait mode.
Continue changing the format of your document and printing sections of the document. When you're done, you'll have multiple PDF documents saved for all of the pages in your original document.

You may need to insert section breaks between pages to keep the document text organized on the correct pages as you change document formatting back and forth.
Finally, use any desktop or online PDF editors to merge those individual PDF files back into one document. Once you're done, you'll see that your document now has individual pages or sections in different formats.
If you've opted to print the pages to your printer, at this point you can assemble the pages back together into a single document.