Why Is My Printer Printing PDF Pages in Landscape Instead of Portrait? (Orientation Fix)

Your PDF is almost always fine. Something between the viewer and the printer decided to turn the page. The usual causes are an automatic orientation setting in the print dialog, a printer driver whose default was left on Landscape, a pages-per-sheet setting of 2, or a page that is stored sideways inside the PDF with a rotation flag on top.

The quickest fix: in the print dialog, choose Portrait explicitly instead of an automatic option, set pages per sheet to 1, and look at the preview before you click Print. If the preview is already sideways with Portrait selected, the cause is the file or the driver, and the sections further down cover both.

Four reasons a portrait page prints sideways

The viewer chose the orientation for you

Acrobat and Reader pick an orientation for each page unless you tell them otherwise. Older versions call the option Auto-Rotate and Center, and newer ones show it as an automatic choice under Orientation. Adobe notes that this automatic choice overrides the orientation set in page setup. Preview on a Mac has an Auto Rotate box that turns pages to fill as much of the paper as possible.

Automatic modes look at the shape of each page. A scan with an extra strip of margin, or a page that is a few points wider than it is tall, gets treated as landscape and turned.

The printer driver defaults to Landscape

Every printer driver stores its own default settings. If someone switched it to Landscape for a wide spreadsheet and never switched it back, apps that do not set orientation themselves will keep printing sideways.

Two pages per sheet, or booklet mode

Printing two pages per sheet places two portrait pages side by side on a landscape sheet. If Pages per sheet is set to 2, in the dialog or in the driver's Layout tab, a single page comes out small and turned. Booklet printing does the same thing on purpose.

The page itself is stored sideways

A PDF page has a size and, separately, a rotation value of 0, 90, 180 or 270 degrees. Scanner software and phone scanning apps often save a portrait page as a landscape image with a 90 degree rotation on top. On screen the viewer applies the rotation and the page looks right. When an automatic orientation mode then judges the page by its stored shape, the two decisions can disagree and the page is printed the wrong way round.

Fix it in the print dialog

Adobe Acrobat or Reader

1. 1.Press Ctrl+P on Windows or Cmd+P on a Mac.
2. 2.Under Orientation, choose Portrait instead of the automatic option. In older versions, clear Auto-Rotate and Center.
3. 3.Under Page Sizing & Handling, choose Fit, or Actual size if the page already matches your paper.
4. 4.Clear Choose paper source by PDF page size. It can override your orientation and tray choice.
5. 5.Check the preview on the right side of the dialog, then click Print.

Chrome or Edge

1. 1.Open the PDF in the browser and press Ctrl+P or Cmd+P.
2. 2.Set Layout to Portrait.
3. 3.Open More settings, set Pages per sheet to 1, and check that Paper size matches the paper in the tray.
4. 4.Look at the preview, then click Print.

Preview on a Mac

1. 1.Press Cmd+P. If the dialog is small, click Show Details.
2. 2.Choose the portrait orientation icon.
3. 3.Clear Auto Rotate.
4. 4.Choose Scale to Fit with Print Entire Image, so nothing is cropped.
5. 5.In the Layout section, set Pages per Sheet to 1.

If you print this way often, open the Presets menu and choose Save Current Settings as Preset, so you do not have to repeat the steps each time.

Reset the Windows driver default

1. 1.Open Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Printers & scanners.
2. 2.Select your printer and open Printing preferences.
3. 3.On the Layout, Basic or Main tab (the name depends on the printer maker), set Orientation to Portrait and Pages per sheet to 1.
4. 4.Click Apply, then OK. The new defaults apply to every app that does not choose its own.

Fix it in the file

If the preview is sideways even with Portrait selected, or the same file prints wrong from every app and every printer, the PDF itself needs a change:

• ●Every page is turned the same way. Rotate PDF turns all pages by 90 or 180 degrees in your browser. It only changes each page's rotation value, so text and images are not re-encoded. Save the new copy and print that.
• ●Only some pages are wrong. Mixed documents need page-by-page handling. Our guide to combining portrait and landscape pages walks through it.
• ●The page size does not match your paper. An A4 page printed on Letter paper, or the reverse, can push automatic modes into odd choices and clip the edges. Resize PDF sets every page to Letter or A4 and scales the content to fit. If the problem is wide white borders rather than rotation, see why PDFs print with huge margins on Letter paper.

When the front is right but the back is upside down

This is a duplex setting rather than an orientation problem. For portrait documents, double-sided printing should flip on the long edge. Flip on short edge is meant for landscape pages and calendars, and on a portrait document it turns every back page upside down. The option sits in the print dialog or the driver's Layout tab, next to the two-sided setting.