Shanto Roy

I Explore Research, Tech, Travel, and Business. PhD Student @UHCS.

6 minute read

This post discusses the basic of Latex tables and usage in documentation. All the codes and outputs are available in the Overleaf Document.

Basic Syntax

Let’s look at a basic table syntax in latex. Then we will discuss the components of the code.

\begin{table}[h!]
\centering
\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|} 
 \hline
 Col1 & Col2 & Col3 & Col4 \\
 \hline\hline
 1 & First & 111 & This is a test \\ 
 2 & Second & 222 & Another test \\
 3 & Third & 333 & this is too \\
 4 & Fourth & 444 & And it continues  \\
 5 & Fifth & 555 & To the end \\ [1ex] 
 \hline
\end{tabular}
\caption{Write your Caption Here}
\label{table:first_table}
\end{table}

Now, let’s understand the code-

  • A table starts with \begin{table} and ends with \end{table} containing one or multiple tabular structure with rows and columns, caption, and a label.
  • [h!] is float value; setting the table floating position to be just at the place of code. [htb] refers to here, top, and bottom with orderly preference.
  • In the tabular section we see four c; it is a column type and means four columns with putting the text in the center of the cell. You can also use l for left-align or r for right-align format. The pipe symbol | denotes the side border of a cell.
  • \hline is used for generating a complete horizontal line for a table. \cline{2-4} can be used if horizontal line is required only from second to fourth cell.
  • Column values are seperated by an &. If you are done with writing the values for a row, use // to start writing values for a new row.

Latex Table Generator

LatexTableGenerator is a pretty good shortcut to generate code for Latex Tables. It almost feels like creating tables in MS Word or any other word processing tools. You can select a basic structure, add rows and columns, format texts, split and merge cells etc. and then click on generate code to have the code. All you need to do is copy and paste the code in your latex document.

Column types

We have already discussed about the l/c/r column type. Usually the cell width is defined by the length of the text. But that is inconvenient in terms of long paragraph. In that case, we can use p{value in cm} format; for example: p{3cm}, the cell width should be 3cm long. For better formatting, you can use custom column type, e.g.-

\newcolumntype{M}[1]{>{\centering\arraybackslash}m{#1}}

Example table is provided in the overleaf document (Table 2).

Multirow/ Multicolumn Formatting

Cell merging (row/column-wise) can be performed using the multirow package. Should be written as \multirow{# of rows}{width}{text} and \multicolumn{# of columns}{col type}{text} for merging cells row-wise and column-wise respectively.

\usepackage{multirow}
\multirow{2}{*}{text}
\multicolumn{2}{c}{text}

If required to use both together for a cell, use the following format.

\multicolumn{3}{c}{\multirow{2}{*}{text}}

Note that, if you have used custom M type column as I showed before, do not forget to add the total value of the each column width. Look at the following example:

\begin{tabular}{|M{4.1cm}|M{3cm}||M{5cm}|}
\hline
\multicolumn{2}{|M{7.1cm}|}{\textbf{Source-1}} & \textbf{Source-2} \\ \hline \hline
Data1 & Data2 & Data3 \\ \hline
\end{tabular}

As we are merging first two columns, we need to add the total value of cell-widths: 4.1+3 = 7.1 cm.

Adjusting the table

There is no default adjustment option for a latex table similar to latex figures. In case of figure, you can use [width=\textwidth] within the includegraphics command. For tables, resizebox and adjustbox can be used to adjust it with the default text column width of a document. Using resizebox is preferable.

\usepackage{graphics}
\resizebox{\columnwidth}{!}{
% \begin{tabular}...\end{tabular}
}

or use this:

\usepackage{adjustbox}
\begin{adjustbox}{width=\textwidth}
% \begin{tabular}...\end{tabular}
\end{adjustbox}

Tables side by side

You can use any of the following to put small tables side by side.

\begin{table}[ht]
    \centering
    \begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|}
\hline
t1 & t2 & t3 \\\hline
d1 & d2 & d3 \\\hline
\end{tabular}
\quad
\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|}
\hline
t1 & t2 & t3 \\\hline
d1 & d2 & d3 \\\hline
\end{tabular}
    \caption{Tables side by side}
    \label{tab:my_label}
\end{table}

or,

\usepackage{subfig} % note that it clashes with subcaption
\begin{table}[ht]
    \centering
    \subfloat[sub-caption 01]{
    \begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|}
    \hline
    t1 & t2 & t3 \\\hline
    d1 & d2 & d3 \\\hline
    \end{tabular}
    }
    \subfloat[sub-caption 02]{
    \begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|}
    \hline
    t1 & t2 & t3 \\\hline
    d1 & d2 & d3 \\\hline
    \end{tabular}
    }
    \caption{Tables side by side with sub-caption}
    \label{tab:my_label}
\end{table}

or,

\begin{table}[ht]
\parbox{.45\linewidth}{
\centering
\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|}
    \hline
    t1 & t2 & t3 \\\hline
    d1 & d2 & d3 \\\hline
    \end{tabular}
\caption{Table 01}
}
\hfill
\parbox{.45\linewidth}{
\centering
\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|}
    \hline
    t1 & t2 & t3 \\\hline
    d1 & d2 & d3 \\\hline
    \end{tabular}
\caption{Table 02}
}
\caption{Two different tables side by side}
\end{table}

For long tables, you can merge both tables and partition those with hhline package. In a recent paper work, I tried the abovementioned codes but did not succeed. Then I found it and to be honest, hhline is really awesome.

\hhline{---||---} is used instead of simple \hline. Here, the total number of cell in a row is 6 and the partition comes after 3 columns. Just remember, if you need to omit a horizontal line due to multirow cells, you need to use ~ instead of -. For example, \hhline{~~-||---} where first two columns have a multirow situation.

The following table code includes multirow, multicolumn, resizebox, and hhline all together:

\begin{table}[ht]
\caption{Multirow and Multicolumn together}
\label{tab:table 4}
%  resizebox is used just outside tabular
\resizebox{\columnwidth}{!}{
\begin{tabular}{|M{2.1cm}|M{1cm}||M{2cm}|M{1cm}|M{2cm}|M{1cm}|M{2cm}|M{1cm}|}
\hhline{--||------}
\multicolumn{2}{|M{3.1cm}||}{\multirow{2}{*}{\textbf{Source 1}}} & \multicolumn{6}{M{10.3cm}|}{\textbf{Source 2}} \\ \hhline{~~||------}\hhline{~~||------}
\multicolumn{2}{|M{3.1cm}||}{\textbf{}} &
\multicolumn{2}{M{3.5cm}|}{\textbf{Blockchain}} & \multicolumn{2}{M{3.3cm}|}{\textbf{SDN}} & \multicolumn{2}{M{3.5cm}|}{\textbf{Data Science}} \\ \hhline{--||------}
 \textbf{Key}  & \textbf{Value} & \textbf{Key}  & \textbf{Value} & \textbf{Key}& \textbf{Value} & \textbf{Key} & \textbf{Value} \\ \hhline{--||------}\hhline{--||------}
 
\textcolor{blue}{Test1} & 2121 & BC  & 1787  & SDN & 267 & DS &  567\\ \hhline{--||------}
Test2 & 1989 & Bitcoin & 857  & SW & 131  & Python & 438 \\ \hhline{--||------}
Test3 & 1600 & SC & 5013 & Ryu & 32 & R & 208 \\ \hhline{--||------}
\textcolor{blue}{Test4} & 1540 & MM & 21 & POX & 697 & Julia & 186 \\ \hhline{--||------}

\end{tabular}
}
\end{table}

Once again, all the codes are available in the overleaf document.

Cheers!!!

You can find a comprehensive list of Latex resources in the following post:

Latex Resources in a Nutshell

If you are a new Latex user, check out this post: 20 Most Common Mistakes Made by New Latex Users

You can find all Latex oriented posts of mine in: https://shantoroy.com/categories/#latex

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