Resize table and caption

Question

I usually apply a \scalebox to resize things, but I always stumble upon the fact that I cannot simply include a \caption{...} in the \scalebox.

As an alternative to \scalebox, I found I may use \resizebox, but this macro also does not allow me to include \caption{...}'s.

Is there anyway to resize both the tabular and the table's caption?

Answer 1

Here is working example of resizing table together with caption.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\begin{document}

\begin{table}[htbp]
  \centering
  \resizebox{0.5\textwidth}{!}{\begin{minipage}{\textwidth}
        \caption{Table caption}
        \begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|}
          \hline
          $t_0~(MeV\cdot fm^3 ) $ & $t_3~(MeV\cdot fm^6)$ & $v_0/\mu~(MeV\cdot fm)$ & $1/\mu~(fm)$\\
          \hline
          $$ -497.726 & $17270$ & $-166.924$ & $0.45979$\\
          \hline
        \end{tabular}
      \end{minipage}}
\end{table}

\end{document}

FIXED: Example was edited. Thanks!

Answer 2

How to scale/resize a table/tabular inside a minipage

This question is the first one to pop up when searching for: latex scale table in minipage. Likewise queries such as rescale table in minipage or resize table in minipage end up at this answer too.

I was personally also searching for this and couldn't find an answer anywhere. However, I've found the solution. Judging by the amount of views of this question, I guess it'll be extremely helpful to some people to post it here.

So to resize/rescale a table inside a minipage, do the following:

Include the adjustbox package in your preamble:

\usepackage{adjustbox}
\usepackage{caption}    % only if you want to add a caption to your table

Now you can rescale your tabular or table environment as follows:

\begin{minipage}[t]{0.5\textwidth}                          % minipage spans half the textwidth
\begin{center}
  \begin{adjustbox}{center, width=\columnwidth-10pt}        % can also use \linewidth or sth. else

      % your table ..                                       % put your table here

  \end{adjustbox}
  \captionof{table}{Your caption goes here}                 % add a caption if you want
\end{center}
\end{minipage}

Note that I've used the parameter center (to center the content). Somehow I still needed \begin{center} .. \end{center} to get everything properly aligned. Also note I used width=\columnwidth-10pt which scales both the width and height of the table simultaneously.

To use other scaling, simply use another width= for your adjustbox. This works just as normal width parameters.

Hope that helped some people out :)

You can find additional documentation of adjustbox here: adjustbox documentation.

Edit: A MWE

A minimal working example (MWE) would be the following:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{adjustbox}
\usepackage{caption}    % only if you want to add a caption to your table

\begin{document}
\noindent                                                   % remove any indentation
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.5\textwidth}                          % minipage spans half the textwidth
    \begin{center}
        \begin{adjustbox}{center, width=\columnwidth-10pt}  % can also use \linewidth or sth. else

            \begin{tabular}{c | c}                          % little tabular example
                Column 1 & Column 2 \\
                \hline
                1 & 2
            \end{tabular}

        \end{adjustbox}
        \captionof{table}{Your caption goes here}           % add a caption if you want
    \end{center}
\end{minipage}
\end{document}