Microsoft Word became non-responding when I changed my page orientation from portrait to landscape

Question

The issue that I am reporting seems to be a fairly recent thing (from October 2024?) as I am used to formatting relatively large Word documents and did not have the issue previously.

Recently whenever I tried to change the orientation of (part of) my Word document from portrait into landscape, the Word seemed to become not responding. This is seemed to occur irrespective of the size of the document - it went non-responding even when I tried to change from portrait to landscape for a freshly opened blank document. Although in the case of a one-page document Word did come back after 30 seconds or so. Nevertheless, for a bigger document, this may cause the Word program to freeze/crash, which is very disrupting. Any fix / advice would be very much appreciated.

(I tried on a blank Word document - after coming back from an initial non-responding phase, I tried to turn the document back to portrait. This took effect immediately, I then tried to insert a section break, and then turned the next page into landscape. This took effect immediately too. I then inserted a further section break and tried to turn the next page back to portrait. The Word program went freezing again, but did come back after some seconds/minutes while I am typing this experiment.)

Answer 1

What printer do you have selected as the Windows default? It's a long shot, but often problems with formatting issues (page setup, fonts, styles, symbols, paragraph settings, etc.) result from Word's not being able to see a printer driver. Usually it's best to have the driver installed locally even if the printer is remote (on a network).

Answer 2

I'm glad that worked for you. This problem is a longstanding one but often overlooked.

Answer 3

I was not aware of this, but apparently my default printer was a network one. I changed it to 'Microsoft Print to PDF' following your advice, and the issue seems to have gone!

Thank you so much for Suzanne your advice, which is very much appreciated!