I'm currently working on a report template where I use a table with minipages to represent tickets along with their descriptions. The minipage is utilized for the descriptions so that the ticket and the first description start at the same height. However, since minipages are not breakable, a significant amount of space is left between the project name and the table, as the tickets with their descriptions are then displayed on the next page due to the table being too long. Additionally, I've noticed that if I have too many descriptions, they simply run off the end of the page.
I would like everything to be displayed as space-efficiently as possible.
If you´d like to rebuild:
\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage{geometry}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{tabularx}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{anyfontsize}
\usepackage[table]{xcolor}
\usepackage{colortbl}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{longtable}
\XeTeXinputencoding=ansinew
% Seitenränder einstellen
\geometry{left=2.5cm, right=2.5cm, top=2.5cm, bottom=2.5cm}
\definecolor{companycolor}{RGB}{175,7,57}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhf{}
\fancyhead[C]{}
\setlength{\headsep}{2cm} % Ändert den Abstand zwischen Header und Textkörper
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}
\renewcommand{\footrulewidth}{0pt}
% Dokument beginnt hier
\begin{document}
\noindent % Keine Einrückung für die minipages
\begin{minipage}[t!]{0.5\textwidth}
\begin{flushleft}
\fontsize{8}{10}\selectfont % Schriftgröße für Firmenname
\textbf{\textcolor{companycolor}{companyname GmbH}}
\textbf{street 18a code city}:\vspace*{1.1cm} % Vertikaler Abstand
\ \textbf{Kundenfirma}
\ \textbf{Ansprechpartner}
\ \textbf{Rechnungsanschrift}
\end{flushleft}
\end{minipage}%
%
\begin{minipage}[t!]{0.5\textwidth}
\begin{flushright}
\fontsize{8}{10}\selectfont
\begin{tabular}{l}
Contact$:$ contactname \
Phone$:$ 0123 4567890 \
Mail$:$ a.bcdf@company.com \
\
Order no$:$ 4500715194 \
Offer no$:$ 23-07028 \
Date$:$ 24.08.2023 \
\end{tabular}
\end{flushright}
\end{minipage}%
\vspace{2cm}
\section*{\fontsize{20}{24}Activity Report}
\vspace{-0.5cm}
\fontsize{12}{14}Februar 2024 \
\
\
\noindent Random Projectname\
\vspace{-0.8cm}\\line(1,0){450}\\vspace{-1cm}\\begin{longtable}{@{} >{\bfseries}l p{14cm}@{\hspace{6ex}} l @{}}
General &\begin{minipage}[t]{\linewidth}\begin{itemize}[noitemsep]
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\
\end{itemize}
\end{minipage} \
\end{longtable}
\noindent Random Projectname\
\vspace{-0.8cm}\\line(1,0){450}\\vspace{-1cm}\\begin{longtable}{@{} >{\bfseries}l p{14cm}@{\hspace{6ex}} l @{}}
ticketname &\begin{minipage}[t]{\linewidth}\begin{itemize}[noitemsep]
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\
\end{itemize}
\end{minipage} \
ticketname &\begin{minipage}[t]{\linewidth}\begin{itemize}[noitemsep]
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\
\end{itemize}
\end{minipage} \
ticketname &\begin{minipage}[t]{\linewidth}\begin{itemize}[noitemsep]
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\
\end{itemize}
\end{minipage} \
ticketname &\begin{minipage}[t]{\linewidth}\begin{itemize}[noitemsep]
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\
\end{itemize}
\end{minipage} \
ticketname &\begin{minipage}[t]{\linewidth}\begin{itemize}[noitemsep]
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\item description
\
\end{itemize}
\end{minipage} \
\end{longtable}
\section*{\fontsize{20}{24}Overview - Total hours}
\vspace{-0.5cm}
\line(1,0){450}\
\begin{tabular}{@{} >{\bfseries}l @{\hspace{40ex}} r @{}}
Category&Number h\
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

pcolumn which is already a \parbox[t] with xetex you can not use inputenc it either does nothing if you specify utf8 or it gives an error if you specify anything else. ansinew can not work at all, and even in pdflatex where it does work it is bad to use a non standard microsoft encoding from the 1980s rather than standard encodings such as utf-8 or latin1 – David Carlisle Mar 14 '24 at 08:42