Chngcntr: \counterwithout not working

Question

I need to place the tables section after my appendix. I've used \counterwithin{table}{section} to number appendix tables A.1, A.2, etc. Then I use \counterwithout{table}{section} so that the tables in the main Table section (which is forced to technically be in the appendix) are numbered 3, 4, etc. But still the main tables come out as B.3, B.4, etc. It seems \counterwithout is not working.

Answer 1

The chngcntr package provides starred variants to the macros \counterwithin and \counterwithout. The unstarred version of \counterwithin{<slave>}{<master>} resets <slave> whenever <master> is incremented, but also includes <master> in the display of <slave>. The reverse is performed by \counterwithout{<slave>}{<master>}, basically undoing the former. However, the starred variants \counterwithin* and \counterwithout* everything but redefining the display of the counter <slave>. For example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{chngcntr}% http://ctan.org/pkg/chngcntr
\begin{document}
\counterwithin{table}{section}
\section{A section}
\stepcounter{table}\thetable,
\stepcounter{table}\thetable,
\stepcounter{table}\thetable

\appendix
\section{A section}
\stepcounter{table}\thetable,
\stepcounter{table}\thetable,
\stepcounter{table}\thetable

\counterwithout*{table}{section}
\section{A section}
\stepcounter{table}\thetable,
\stepcounter{table}\thetable,
\stepcounter{table}\thetable

\counterwithout{table}{section}
\section{A section}
\stepcounter{table}\thetable,
\stepcounter{table}\thetable,
\stepcounter{table}\thetable
\end{document}

In the above example, the table counter is printed three times in each section. Issuing \counterwithout*{table}{section} (note the *) before Section B merely removed the resetting of the table counter at the start of the section, but not he <section>.<table> counter display. Section C corrects for this behaviour.

As a last resort, and as mentioned in the chngcntr package documentation, you can redefine the counter display yourself using, for example,

\renewcommand{\thetable}{\arabic{table}}

This will strip any concatenated counters and print only the table number in arabic/numeric form (just like in Section C).