Tool for manipulating LaTeX tables (HTML to LaTeX)

Question

I am wondering if there is any tool that can help me work with tables in LaTeX. Specifically I'd like to be able to import HTML tables (or small Excel tables) into LateX

Are there tools that can help me do that painlessly?

Bear in mind that properly formatted tables for publication are not the same as the sort of thing that Excel, etc., produce. So even if you can import stuff quickly you may well have to work on the appearance. — Joseph Wright, Aug 16 '10 at 07:48
@Mark Since you have some responses below that seem to answer your question, please consider marking one of them as ‘Accepted’ by clicking on the tickmark below their vote count (see How do you accept an answer?). This shows which answer helped you most, and it assigns reputation points to the author of the answer (and to you!). It's part of this site's idea to identify good questions and answers through upvotes and acceptance of answers. ;) — Alessandro Cuttin, Dec 02 '16 at 10:59

Alessandro Cuttin · Answer 1 · 2011-07-27T15:54:29.063

27

I think that, if you are able to import your html tables in Excel or OpenOffice Calc, these tools are what you need:

Excel2LaTeX for MSExcel
Calc2LaTeX for OO Calc (this one is my preferred, guess why ;)

The first one is a macro you add to your Excel, and provides you with an extra button to create the LaTeX code for the table from a set of selected cells, ready to be pasted in your .tex source. The second, is an extension of OO, but should work in the same way.

Edit: there is also html2LaTeX, but I never used it.

Happy TeXing!

edited Jul 27 '11 at 15:54

answered Aug 16 '10 at 07:45

Alessandro Cuttin

6,963

I have started a comprehensive list -- do you want to add a description of Calc2LaTeX, especially comparing it to current Excel2LaTeX? – krlmlr Mar 29 '12 at 07:31
Have just installed calc2latex, via sudo apt-get install libreoffice-writer2latex apt says this if for writer and calc. I see it in the extension manager. However I can not workout how to use it: Where is it? What do I have to click? – ctrl-alt-delor May 29 '16 at 14:07

score 12 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 24 '13 at 13:05

12

The on-line LaTeX table editor at http://truben.no/latex/table/ is very handy. You can import your data in LaTeX, JSON or CSV format (the last of these being relevant to this question), and export it in LaTeX format (among numerous other formats). It's also very easy to insert/delete columns, etc., and change the formatting.

answered Jun 24 '13 at 13:05

rexg

121

1

The online tool is able to import HTML, LaTeX, Balsamiq, CSV and JSON data. – AIpeter Jul 15 '19 at 20:44
Great tool, but not everything seems to work, especially merged columns (HTML) to LaTeX do not work for me. – stephanmg Oct 01 '20 at 09:11

score 12 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 16 '10 at 07:48

12

Check out this page http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/entries/datatool.html and tools it links ie csvtools and pgfplotstable. They allow you to keep the data in csv or tsv format and configure typesetting options in .tex source. I have used pgfplotstable and it is very handy.

answered Aug 16 '10 at 07:48

Leo Liu

5,445

2

This is a good alternative to directly importing the data, particularly for large data sets or ones that will change over time. – Joseph Wright Aug 16 '10 at 07:50
I agree: CSVtools is very powerful and it's worth considering the csv way against the conversion from excel to the latex code, especially for large amount of data. In case of small tables, converting from excel could be more convenient. – Alessandro Cuttin Aug 17 '10 at 10:06
But when the table is small inputing isn't much of a problem. – Leo Liu Aug 17 '10 at 10:27
4

csvtools has been replaced by the datatool package (by the same author.) – Alan Munn Mar 20 '11 at 00:28
@Leo: I have started a comprehensive list -- do you want to add datatool? I'm not familiar with it. – krlmlr Mar 29 '12 at 07:30

score 10 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 03 '14 at 10:25

10

you can try this one: http://www.tablesgenerator.com/latex_tables#

it can generate latex table codes as well as other formats like markdown, html, wiki etc.

answered Dec 03 '14 at 10:25

efinal

101

Alan Munn · Answer 5 · 2013-08-27T20:29:32.270

7

If you use TeXShop on the Mac, there is a built-in macro for pasting copied spreadsheet cells directly into your latex sources into a variety of popular table formats. The same scripts are also available for other Mac text editors here: csv2latex. (OB Disclaimer: I am the author.)

edited Aug 27 '13 at 20:29

answered Jan 04 '11 at 21:55

Alan Munn

218,180

I have started a comprehensive list -- do you want to add your tool? I'm not familiar with it, and I don't have a Mac. – krlmlr Mar 29 '12 at 07:30

score 2 · Answer 6 · edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

2

CALS tables

Perhaps you will feel more comfortable defining tables in CALS syntax immediately in LaTeX.

The CALS table model is the historic precursor of the HTML table model. It is easier in use and offers more capabilities than tabularx.

Here is the documentation of the cals package:

http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/cals (demo & doc)
http://tug.org/TUGboat/tb32-2/tb101parashchenko.pdf (user's manual)

edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

Community

1

answered Jun 21 '13 at 08:40

Serge Stroobandt

4,252

Nowadays, I create most of my tables as Pandoc Markdown pipe tables, which are very intuitive to create. Pandoc then converts to LaTeX, ConTeXt,… – Serge Stroobandt Dec 02 '16 at 01:16

sophros · Answer 7 · 2018-11-16T06:47:58.007

1

As long as you can transform the table you want to import to one of the formats that Python pandas module reads or you can read it in in Python and use tabulate module to output the properly LaTeX-formatted table which could be a good starting point.

Recipes from this StackOverflow question can be a good starting point if you do not know Python

edited Nov 16 '18 at 06:47

answered Nov 15 '18 at 20:47

sophros

163

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Feb 09 '15 at 14:27

Calc2LaTeX is the best option as said above, but if you're constantly switching computers or on a mac (I regularly do both), then an online editor is a good option.

I have found http://www.tablesgenerator.com/latex_tables# is the best online editor, as efinal recommended, because it also converts & % to \& \% straightforwardly, which http://truben.no/latex/table/ doesn't, as far as I can tell. The Truben Table Editor was no good to me as the paste command simply pasted an entire table into one cell, fustratingly.

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Dec 02 '16 at 08:39

0

If you use TexStudio, there is a wizard for tabular, looks like

answered Dec 02 '16 at 08:39

ybtang21c

116

Indeed TeXStudio has the wizard, but apparently it does not provide the feature of importing tables of different nature (as the question asks) – Alessandro Cuttin Dec 02 '16 at 11:02

Tool for manipulating LaTeX tables (HTML to LaTeX)

9 Answers9

CALS tables

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