Tables in LaTeX

(Updated May 2017)

Making tables in LaTeX is one of the few areas where LaTeX can be more difficult than a WYSIWYG editor.

Here are some pointers to tools and packages that I have found useful.

• tablesgenerator.com: a web-based tool for generating LaTeX tables.

• Excel2LaTeX: this excel add-in makes it easy to copy a rectangular array of cells in a spreadsheet into a LaTeX document.

• Calc2LaTeX: a similar extension for LibreOffice and OpenOffice.

• The LaTeX wikibook has a great page on producing tables in LaTeX.

• Tutorials on tables from the Indian TeX users group:

  1. The basics
  2. Long tables
  3. Coloured tables

• The array package for applying formatting commands to whole columns and providing additional formatting options for paragraph-like columns.

• The tabularx package for setting a table with fixed-width and paragraph columns with width automatically calculated.

• The booktabs package for providing nicer horizontal lines and better spacing control.

• The longtables package for tables that are too big for a single page.

• Typesetting tables with LaTeX: a nice (and short) article covering the basics as well as the above four packages.