Making LaTeX tables smaller?

Latex

Latex Problem Overview


I have a LaTeX table that looks like this:

\begin{table}[!ht]
\centering
\small
\caption{
\bf{Caption}}
\begin{tabular}{l|c|c|l|c|c|c|c|c}
field1 & field 2 & ... \\ 
\hline
...

the problem is that even with "\small" the table is too big, since I use:

\usepackage{setspace} 
\doublespacing

in the header. How can I:

  1. Make the table single spaced? and
  2. Make the table smaller?

I'd like it to fit on an entire page.

Latex Solutions


Solution 1 - Latex

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Tables#Resize_tables talks about two ways to do this.

I used:

\scalebox{0.7}{
  \begin{tabular}
    ...
  \end{tabular}
}

Solution 2 - Latex

As well as \singlespacing mentioned previously to reduce the height of the table, a useful way to reduce the width of the table is to add \tabcolsep=0.11cm before the \begin{tabular} command and take out all the vertical lines between columns. It's amazing how much space is used up between the columns of text. You could reduce the font size to something smaller than \small but I normally wouldn't use anything smaller than \footnotesize.

Solution 3 - Latex

if it's too long for one page, use the longtable package. and if it's too wide for the page, use p{width} in place of l,r, or c for the column specifier. you can also go smaller than \small, i.e. \footnotesize and \tiny. I would consult the setspace package for options on how to remove the double space, though it's probably \singlespace or something like that.

Solution 4 - Latex

You could add \singlespacing near the beginning of your table. See the setspace instructions for more options.

Solution 5 - Latex

There is also the singlespace environment:

\begin{singlespace}
\end{singlespace}

Solution 6 - Latex

If you want a smaller table (e.g. if your table extends beyond the area that can be displayed) you can simply change:

\usepackage[paper=a4paper]{geometry} to \usepackage[paper=a3paper]{geometry}.


Note that this only helps if you don't plan on printing your table out, as it will appear way too small, then.

Attributions

All content for this solution is sourced from the original question on Stackoverflow.

The content on this page is licensed under the Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.

Content TypeOriginal AuthorOriginal Content on Stackoverflow
Questionuser248237View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - LatexKrzysztof VossView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - LatexRob HyndmanView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - LatexMicaView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - LatexJohnView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 5 - LatexPenzView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 6 - LatexValentinView Answer on Stackoverflow