Maybe I got lucky on your problem, consequently don't understand why problems keep bothering. Here is my trial and the page does not rotate. My system is MiKTeK running on Window vista, with TeXworks, using xelatex \documentclass[a4paper]{book} \usepackage{rotating} %Demonstration of long table \begin{document} \begin{sidewaystable} \centering% \begin{tabular}{ccp{0.45in}p{0.45in}p{0.45in}p{0.45in}p{0.45in}p{0.45in}p{0.45in}p{0.45in}p{0.45in}p{0.45in}p{0.45in}p{0.45in}p{0.45in}p{0.45in}} \hline\hline \textbf{AAA} & & \multicolumn{1}{c}{} & \multicolumn{13}{c}{\textbf{% BBB}} \\ True $\lambda _{L}$ & & & $\lambda _{L,1}$ & $\lambda _{L,3}$ & lambda3 & $\lambda _{L,4}$ & $\lambda _{L,6}$ & $\lambda _{L,n}$ & $\lambda _{L,n}$ & $\lambda _{L,n}$ & $\lambda _{L,n}$ & $\lambda _{L,n}$ & $\lambda _{L,n}$ & $\lambda _{L,n}$ & $\lambda _{L,n}$ \\ \hline\hline \end{tabular}% \caption{Comparison study}% \end{sidewaystable} \begin{sidewaystable} \centering \begin{tabular}{lll} \hline column1 & column2 & column3 \\ \hline item1 & item2 & item3 \\ itemA & itemB & itemC \\ \hline \end{tabular} \end{sidewaystable} \end{document} If you got page rotated (to landscape), this particular page can be rotated back (to portrait) by using acrobat (need editable version, not reader).