UK TeX FAQ -- question label footintab

### Footnotes in tables

The standard LaTeX `\``footnote` command doesn’t work in tables; the table traps the footnotes and they can’t escape to the bottom of the page.

If your table is floating, your best bet is (unfortunately) to put the table in a `minipage` environment and to put the notes underneath the table, or to use Donald Arseneau’s package threeparttable (which implements “table notes” proper).

The ctable package extends the model of threeparttable, and also uses the ideas of the booktabs package. The `\``ctable` command does the complete job of setting the table, placing the caption, and defining the notes. The “table” may consist of diagrams, and a parameter in `\``ctable`’s optional argument makes the float that is created a “figure” rather than a “table”.

Otherwise, if your table is not floating (it’s just a ‘`tabular`’ in the middle of some text), there are several things you can do to fix the problem.

- Use `\``footnotemark` to position the little marker appropriately, and then put in `\``footnotetext` commands to fill in the text once you’ve closed the `tabular` environment. This is described in Lamport’s book, but it gets messy if there’s more than one footnote.
- Stick the table in a `minipage` anyway. This provides all the ugliness of footnotes in a minipage with no extra effort.
- Use threeparttable anyway; the package is intended for floating tables, and the result might look odd if the table is not floating, but it will be reasonable.
- Use tabularx or longtable from the LaTeX tools distribution; they’re noticeably less efficient than the standard `tabular` environment, but they do allow footnotes.
- Use footnote, which provides an `savenotes` which collects all footnotes and emits them at the end of the environment; thus if you put your `tabular` environment inside the environment, the footnotes will appear as needed. Alternatively, you may use `\``makesavenoteenv{tabular}` in the preamble of your document, and tables will all behave as if they were inside a `savenotes` environment.
- Use mdwtab from the same bundle; it will handle footnotes properly, and has other facilities to increase the beauty of your tables. Unfortunately, it may be incompatible with other table-related packages, though not those in the standard ‘tools’ bundle.

The documentation of threeparttable appears in the package file itself; that of ctable is distributed as a PDF file (for convenience’s sake).

`ctable.sty`
  macros/latex/contrib/ctable (or browse the directory)
`footnote.sty`
  Distributed as part of macros/latex/contrib/mdwtools (or browse the directory)
`longtable.sty`
  Distributed as part of macros/latex/required/tools (or browse the directory)
`mdwtab.sty`
  Distributed as part of macros/latex/contrib/mdwtools (or browse the directory)
`threeparttable.sty`
  macros/latex/contrib/misc/threeparttable.sty
`tabularx.sty`
  Distributed as part of macros/latex/required/tools (or browse the directory)

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