How to force a table into page width?

Question

I have the following table:

\begin{table}[htb]
\begin{tikzpicture}
\node (table) [inner sep=0pt] {
\begin{tabular}{ l | l }
  {\bf Symptom} & {\bf Metric} \\
\hline
Class that has many accessor methods and accesses a lot of external data & ATFD is more than a few\\
Class that is large and complex & WMC is high\\
Class that has a lot of methods that only operate on a proper subset of the instance variable set & TCC is low\\
\end{tabular}
};
\draw [rounded corners=.5em] (table.north west) rectangle (table.south east);
\end{tikzpicture}
\caption{God class symptoms}
\label{tbl:god_class}
\end{table}

Now I want to force the width of the table to be the same as the \textwidth, either by linewrapping of table text or by scaling. How can I achieve that?

Answer 1

You can use the tabularx package. It allows you to set the width of the table and provides the X column type, which fills out the rest of the space. It can be used for several columns, which then share the rest of the width equally.

Example:

\usepackage{tabularx} % in the preamble
% ....
\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{X|l}
  \textbf{Symptom} & \textbf{Metric} \\
\hline
Class that has many accessor methods and accesses a lot of external data & ATFD is more than a few\\
Class that is large and complex & WMC is high\\
Class that has a lot of methods that only operate on a proper subset of the instance variable set & TCC is low\\
\end{tabularx}

In general it is also possible to set the width of a column using p{<width>} instead of l as column type. Then it will be formatted as a paragraph and can include line breaks. Replace <width> with the required width.

Answer 2

Just to mention an additional method: the tabular* environment. Suppose you have a table with 6 center-aligned columns. You can force it to take up the full width of the text block by setting it up as follows:

\setlength\tabcolsep{0pt}
\begin{tabular*}{\linewidth}{@{\extracolsep{\fill}} cccccc }
...
\end{tabular*}

Unlike the tabularx and tabulary environments, which work by expanding the width of some or all of the table's columns, the tabular* environment works by expanding the intercolumn whitespace. Incidentally, when employing tabular* environments with the @{\extracolsep{\fill}} expansion device, one should NOT employ vertical rules in the table.

The directive \setlength\tabcolsep{0pt} is technically optional. However, it's frequently very useful if the tabular material would exceed \linewidth by a bit if the default value of \tabcolsep (usually, but not always, 6pt) is employed.

Speaking for myself, I suspect it's the need to remember to insert @{\extracolsep{\fill}} that has kept the popularity of this approach somewhat subdued...

Answer 3

Here is a simple way:

\newlength\q
\setlength\q{\dimexpr .5\textwidth -2\tabcolsep}
\noindent\begin{tabular}{p{\q}p{\q}}
alfa & bravo \\
charlie & delta
\end{tabular}

Answer 4

Disclaimer: Although tabu might still work in cases it’s development is kind of stuck and it is better to not use it (for new documents). See also Is the tabu package obsolete?

One can use tabu (e.g). It will set the table to a given width without needing to calc the ration by hand.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{tabu}
\usepackage{booktabs}% for better rules in the table

\begin{document}
\begin{tabu} to \textwidth {XXXX}
   \toprule
   xx & 1 & 2 & 3 \\
   \bottomrule
\end{tabu}
\end{document}

tabu comes with the new column type X which sets its width automatically. It has an optional argument taking l, r, c to adjust the alignment inside the cell or a numer to set uneven widths of columns. For example two columns, the first on right, the second one left aligned and twice the width of the first one, will be X[r]X[2] (l and 1 will be set by default). The part between to and {<cols>} can be any width, and the full part can be omitted to, i.e. \begin{tabu}{<cols>}.

tabu is compatible with longtable with the new environment {longtabu}.

---

Adding showframeand some text (lipsum) to the above example shows that the table has exactly the width of the text. On may notice that a table without a float environment is set inline and gets indented as every normal text, too. Use \noindent to prevent that.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{tabu}
\usepackage{booktabs}% for better rules in the table
\usepackage{showframe,lipsum}

\begin{document}
\lipsum[4]

\noindent
\begin{tabu} to \textwidth {XXXX}
   \toprule
   xx & 1 & 2 & 3 \\
   \bottomrule
\end{tabu}
\end{document}

Answer 5

You can also use the graphicx package - I found this solution from the following online Table generator: http://www.tablesgenerator.com/

You just need to add a "resizebox" command that rescales the tabular, see the following:

% Please add the following required packages to your document preamble:
% \usepackage{graphicx}
\begin{table}[htb]
\resizebox{\textwidth}{!}{% use resizebox with textwidth
\begin{tabular}{ l | l }
  {\bf Symptom} & {\bf Metric} \
\hline
Class that has many accessor methods and accesses a lot of external data & ATFD is more than a few\
Class that is large and complex & WMC is high\
Class that has a lot of methods that only operate on a proper subset of the instance variable set & TCC is low\
\end{tabular}% close resizebox
}
\end{table}

Note: that this will scale the whole table, including the font.

Answer 6

After trying the suggestions made in this stackexchange I found a different and fancy solution (without loading any other packages etc.). The key is define the width of each column.

   \begin{table}[ht!]
     \centering
     \caption{Caption text} 
     \begin{tabular}{|p{5cm}|p{9cm}|}
        Text column 1 & long long long long long long long text that should break \\
        \hline
      \end{tabular}
    \end{table}

Answer 7

With ConTeXt, from the reference manual, section 16.5 TeX-figures (svnversion 329, September 27, 2013) :

\startbuffer[table]
\startTABLE
% fill your table here
\stopTABLE
\stopbuffer

\placefigure[none]{}{\externalfigure[table.buffer][width=\textwidth]}

Answer 8

I was having the same issue,

This is how I got to fix it. You can use "m" for the middle, "b" for the bottom and "p" you will need to play a little to get the desired results.

\begin{tabular}{|p{2cm}| p{3cm} | p{2.5cm} |}

Answer 9

It’s easy peasy to make \textwidth tables with tblr environment of the new LaTeX3 package tabularray:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tabularray}
\begin{document}
\begin{tblr}{|X[2,l]|X[3,l]|X[1,r]|X[r]|}
\hline
 Alpha & Beta & Gamma & Delta \\
\hline
\end{tblr}
\end{document}

You can also set negative coefficients in X columns, just as tabu package.

Answer 10

As @deps_stats points out, tabularx may work when the table size is small and you need to adjust it to fit the text width, but it does NOT work when a large table overflows the margins.

Perhaps a better choice is using resizebox. A sample is shown below.

\begin{table}[htb]
  \resizebox{\textwidth}{!}{
    \begin{tabular}{ l | l }
     ...
    \end{tabular}
  }
\end{table}

Answer 11

You can use the colspec function in the tabularray package. Then, use colspec = {X[1]X[2]} to specify the ratio of the width of the table.

Alternatively, you could use Q column method.

Here's a sample code which incorporate setting line color, forcing table into page width, and cell alignment:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{tabularray,lipsum,xcolor}
\begin{document}
\begin{tblr}{
  colspec = {Q[1,c,m]Q[5,l,m]},
  hlines = {gray!75!white},
  vlines = {gray!75!white},
}
ABC & \lipsum[1] \
DEF & \lipsum[2] 
\end{tblr}
\end{document}

Answer 12

Once you have made the table, between \begin{table} add \begin{tabular} enter this:

\makebox[size of the table in cm]{put the tabular environment here}

This works for me. Please try this.