Question
Answer and Explanation
When generating documents with R Markdown (Rmd), long tables might overflow the page. Here's how you can manage this issue and wrap tables to fit within the page margins:
1. Using HTML Table and CSS: You can customize the display of the table using standard HTML and CSS to manage overflow and wrapping behaviors.
- Insert a HTML chunk into your Rmd file by using the following code at the beginning of chunk: {`r ''}`
- For Example you might consider using a <div> tag that wraps the <table> tag inside. Apply the style to that div tag like this: style="overflow-x:auto; display: block;"
- Wrap table as following :
{`r ''}`}
<div style="overflow-x:auto; display: block;">
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Column 1</th>
<th>Column 2</th>
<th>Column 3</th>
<th>Column 4</th>
<th>Column 5</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Data 1</td>
<td>Data 2</td>
<td>Data 3</td>
<td>Data 4</td>
<td>Data 5</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
- This code renders the table with a horizontal scroll bar on the content if table is to long for its div.
2. Adjusting Font Size and Column Widths:
- You can often fit tables within page margins by adjusting font sizes within your CSS declarations to decrease its content. Additionally reduce excessive whitespaces from the cells. Using R markdown you can style each column and define cell padding using function `kable()`.
Example:
{`r
library(knitr)
library(dplyr)
data.frame(Col1 = 1:20,
Col2= sample(1:100, 20, replace=TRUE),
Col3 = sample(c('low', 'mid','high'), 20, replace = T) ,
Col4 = runif(20)
) %>% kable( align=c('c', 'c','l', 'r'), padding = 0)
`}
The align argument defines the alignment (c = center, l = left, r = right). While argument padding sets the paddings of cell and controls amount of white spaces surrounding cell value.
3. Using LaTeX and `kable` Package If your output is PDF, you can often specify more control with latex settings in combination with kable package.
Example: add code to the beginning of your document header (yaml):
output:
pdf_document:
latex_engine: xelatex
includes:
in_header: preamble.tex
then create preamble.tex file in your Rmd folder and insert the following :
\usepackage{adjustbox}
Then in your rmarkdown chunks use
{`r
knitr::kable(my_long_table, format = 'latex', longtable=TRUE ) %>%
kableExtra::kable_styling(latex_options="HOLD_row", position = "left", full_width=F) %>%
kableExtra::kable_as_text()
`}
longtable=TRUE specifies use of longtable enviroment ( which by default adds a break of long table across multiple pages in latex),
HOLD_row attempts to keep together rows when page break must be applied on table.
By following these methods you can effectively manage the presentation of your tables, ensuring they fit appropriately within the generated document, regardless if that output is pdf, html etc...