Footnote in tabular environment

Question

I thought that footnotes would have only a problem with the table environment, but none of the answers in

• Footnotes in Tabulars?
• Footnote in table

seem to work for the tabular environment.

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{l}
Content\footnote{Footnote}
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

Answer 1

For some reason (my preferred choice) the tablefootnote package only works if you wrap the tabular in a table float. A way around is to use \footnotemark and \footnotetext:

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\begin{document}

before
\begin{tabular}{l}
Content\footnotemark\
Content continued\footnotemark\
Content continued further\footnotemark
\end{tabular}
\footnotetext[1]{Footnote}
\footnotetext[2]{Second footnote}
\footnotetext{Third footnote}
after
\end{document}

Note how manual numbering of all but the first footnotetext is necessary. In a longer document, an approach with manually decrementing and incrementing the footnote number might be more viable; that way, the only way you have to watch out for is decrementing by the correct number:

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\begin{document}    
before
\begin{tabular}{l}
Content\footnotemark\
Content continued\footnotemark\
Content continued further\footnotemark
\end{tabular}
\addtocounter{footnote}{-2}
\footnotetext{Footnote}
\addtocounter{footnote}{1}
\footnotetext{Second footnote}
\addtocounter{footnote}{1}
\footnotetext{Third footnote}
after
\end{document}

Answer 2

another possibility is with the footnote package and \makesavenoteenv{tabular}:

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage{footnote}
\makesavenoteenv{tabular}
\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{l}
Content\footnote{footnote text}
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

If one has both tabular-only environment and tabular inside table, it is possibile to load both \makesavenoteenv{tabular} and \makesavenoteenv{table} in the preamble, like this:

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage{footnote}
\makesavenoteenv{tabular}
\makesavenoteenv{table}
\begin{document}
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l}
Content\footnote{footnote text}
\end{tabular}
\end{table}
\begin{tabular}{l}
Content\footnote{footnote text}
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

So to have a more general solution.

Also, a fairly comprehensive list of solutions can be found inside the documentation for the tablefootnotepackage, starting from page 3, section "Alternatives".

Answer 3

You can also use threeparttable package to insert footnotes in the tables.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[flushleft]{threeparttable}
\begin{document}
\begin{table}[h]
\caption{Example of test session results}
\label{tab:test_results}
\centering
\begin{threeparttable}
  \begin{tabular}{|l|l|l|}
    \hline
    Mutants & CPU\tnote{1}     & Memory\tnote{2}    \\ \hline
    Mutant-1   & 23 & 15 \\ \hline
    Mutant-2   & 32 & 11 \\ \hline
  \end{tabular}
  \begin{tablenotes}
    \item[1] Measured in percentages.
    \item[2] Measured in kilobytes (KB).
  \end{tablenotes}
\end{threeparttable}
\end{table}
\end{document}

Output:

Answer 4

I insert footnotes manually at the bottom of the table, which is pretty simple and requires no additional package:

\begin{table}
\caption{The Table.}
\centering
  \begin{tabular}{lrr}
   \hline
          & Variable A & Variable B \\
   \hline
      Item 1        & 234.5 & 678.9 \\
      Item 2~$^{1}$ & 432.1 & 876.5 \\
   \hline
   \multicolumn{3}{l}{$^{1}$\footnotesize{Here is a footnote.}} \\
  \end{tabular}
\end{table}

Answer 5

If you use bidiftnxtra (a part of bidi package), all combinations of table and tabular will work. Ofcourse, this only work if you are using xelatex but the approach can be ported to other packages too:

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage{bidi}
\usepackage{bidiftnxtra}
\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{l}
Content\footnote{Footnote}
\end{tabular}

\begin{table}[h]
\centering
\begin{tabular}{l}
Content\footnote{Footnote}
\end{tabular}
\caption{This is a caption\footnote{Another footnote.}}
\end{table}
\end{document}

Answer 6

I particularly like @CountZero's answer, yet it may happen that your footnote mark is on a different page than your footnote text. In that case, you can move around the \footnotetext to solve that, but how do you become aware of it in the first place?

This code will issue a warning when that happens:

\documentclass{article}

% works with hyperref, too:
% \usepackage{hyperref}

% Footnotes in table with page-number check
\usepackage{refcount}
\newcommand{\myfootnotemark}{\footnotemark\label{fn:mark}}
\newcommand{\myfootnotetext}[1]{\footnotetext{#1\label{fn:text}%
        \edef\fnmark{\getpagerefnumber{fn:mark}}%
        \edef\fntext{\getpagerefnumber{fn:text}}%
        \ifx\fnmark\fntext\else\ClassWarning{}{footnote mark and text on different pages!}\fi}}

\begin{document}
    \begin{tabular}{l}
%       Table stuff \footnote{This does not work: the footnote is missing.}
        Table stuff \myfootnotemark
    \end{tabular}

% uncomment to see the warning:
% \pagebreak

\myfootnotetext{So we do this instead!}

\end{document}

It works only for a single \footnotemark/\footnotetext pair so far, but extension should not be too difficult and those who use this weird hack more than once in a document are hopefully apt enough to adapt my code accordingly :)

Answer 7

An alternative solution with talltblr environment of tabularray package:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\hypersetup{colorlinks}
\usepackage{tabularray}
\begin{document}
\begin{table}[!htbp]
\centering
\begin{talltblr}[
  caption = {Long Long Long Long Tabular},
  note{a} = {It is the first footnote.},
  note{b} = {It is the second long long long long long long footnote.},
]{
  colspec = {XXX}, width = 0.8\linewidth, hlines,
}
 Alpha   & Beta & Gamma\TblrNote{a} \
 Epsilon & Zeta & Eta   \
 Iota    & Kapp & Lambdaa\TblrNote{b} \
\end{talltblr}
\end{table}
\end{document}

Answer 8

The package nicematrix provides an environment {NiceTabular} which is similar to the classical {tabular} (of array) but this extra features.

• When the package is loaded with the key footnote or the key footnotehyper, the commands \footnote are extracted from the tabular (by using the corresponding package: footnote or footnotehyper).

• There is a command \tabularnote from notes which are composed under the tabular.

Demonstrating example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{height=10cm} % in order to have a smaller output (for this post)
\usepackage{booktabs,enumitem}
\usepackage[footnotehyper]{nicematrix}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\begin{document}
\begin{NiceTabular}{l}
\toprule
Content in the first row\tabularnote{A tabular note} \
Some content in the second row\footnote{A footnote} \ 
\bottomrule
\end{NiceTabular}
\end{document}

You need several compilations (because nicematrix uses PGF/Tikz nodes under the hood).

Answer 9

Use the footnotehyper package.

Usage

Just insert

\usepackage{footnotehyper}
\makesavenoteenv{table}
\makesavenoteenv{tabular}

in the preamble.

Example

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{footnotehyper}
\makesavenoteenv{table}
\makesavenoteenv{tabular}
\begin{document}
\begin{table}[p]
  \centering
  \begin{tabular}{|c|c|}
    \hline
    Item 1 & Item 2\footnote{Footnote of the floating table on the other page.} \
    \hline
    Item 3\footnote{Another footnote of the floating table on the other page.} & Item 4 \
    \hline
  \end{tabular}
  \caption{Table with Hyperref Support and Multiple Footnotes}
\end{table}
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{|c|c|}
  \hline
  Item 5\footnote{Footnote in tabular environment.} & Item 6\footnote{Footnote in tabular environment.} \
  \hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
\end{document}

Limitation

As mentioned in the package documentation, even though the footnotes will show up for floating environments, they may be not on the correct page. For tabular environment, it works fine.

Comparison

This is an extensive comparison of all the solutions listed.

Features to be tested:

1. hyperref support
2. footnotetext are placed on the correct page where the footnotemark appear for floating table
3. automatic numbering when there are multiple footnotes
4. footnotes are placed below the table/at the bottom of the page
5. support for tabular environment itself without table environment around it
6. support for floating environment, tabular inside table

Package	1	2	3	4	5	6
footnotehyper	yes	no	yes	bottom of the page	yes	yes
footnote	one link per table	no	yes	bottom of the page	yes	yes
tablefootnote	yes	no	yes	bottom of the page	no	yes
longtable	only go to last page	no	yes	bottom of the page	yes	yes
ftnxtra	no	no	yes	bottom of the page	yes	no
threeparttable	no	yes	yes	below the table	yes	yes
tabularx	no	no	yes	bottom of the page	yes	no
bidiftnxtra	no	no	yes	bottom of the page	yes	no
nicematrix	yes	no	yes	both supported	yes	no
tabularray	yes	yes	no	below the table	yes	yes
raw footnotemark/footnotetext	one link per table	no	yes	bottom of the page	yes	no

The source code for the comparison, as well as links to original answer suggesting the package, can be found at https://gist.github.com/user202729/09825890622de02512e750e04eee41d4 .

Things missing here

Things that could be tested, but isn't:

• Ulrike Fischer's answer at https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/314374/250119
• Joseph Wright's answer at https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/35275/250119

Features that could be tested, but isn't:

7. support for align environment from amsmath

Answer 10

As also posted here, you can also use define a footnote outside the table/tabular by using a custom command marklessfootnote, and then refer to it within the table instead.

\newcommand\marklessfootnote[1]{
    \addtocounter{footnote}{1}
    \footnotetext{#1}
}

The marklessfootnote can then be referred to within a table using a regular \ref command, or the cleveref package command \cref with ease, also compatible with hyperref package.

Ref:

%... inside my doc
\marklessfootnote{My footnote \label{ftn:01}}
%... inside my tabular...
\textsuperscript{\tiny\ref{ftn:01}} % With commands to superscript the mark.

Cleveref:

Note to make Cref link the same style as the regular footnote, you can redefine the format as follows.

\crefformat{footnote}{#2\textsuperscript{\footnotemark[#1]}#3} %option to superscript mark.
%... %inside my doc
\marklessfootnote{My footnote \label{ftn:01}}
%... %inside my tabular...
\cref{ftn:01}