Table notes that are compatible with LaTeX2RTF

Question

I want to create a simple table whit a few table footnotes as common in scientific journals. I've tried the package tablefootnote and the threeparttable but I can't convert them into a RTF document using LaTeX2RTF. What I want is something that looks like this table but I'm pretty certain that I have to be able to get it into Word or the journal wont accept it.

The question: How do I get footnotes right under the table in a way that I can convert it into a Word-compatible format?

UPDATE

@Peter Gill's example produces this output in Word:

I use R for creating my tables. Most of the time I use the Hmisc latex() function that does a beautiful job but I've found that the ctable package and other vital packages aren't included in LaTeX2RTF and therefore I'm in trouble.

I like LaTeX2RTF since it's very simple to work with but after some more websearching I found this post where the Sciweavers seems to have an implementation that handles footnotes slightly better although complex ctables seem to be an issue. I'll also try to give another try at tex4ht package to see if it will handle more complex solutions (how I wish that I could just send all my TeX files without any issues).

Answer 1

Without the code for your table it is difficult to tell what is going wrong with what you have.

However, if you can include an image (have not tried to convert this with LaTeX2RTF), then this example copied form the link you provided seems to produce a table with footnotes:

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}
\begin{table}
  \centering
  \caption{Composition of AA2099}\label{2099comp}
  \smallskip
  \begin{minipage}{3.3cm}
    \centering
    \begin{tabular}{cc}
      \hline\hline
      Element &  wt\% \\  \hline\hline
      Al\footnote{PHTTTT!!!} &  bal \\
      Cu &       2.69 \\
      Li &        1.8 \\
      Zn\footnote{blahblah} &        0.6 \\
      Mg &        0.3 \\
      Mn &        0.3 \\
      Zr &       0.08 \\  \hline
   \end{tabular}\par
   \vspace{-0.75\skip\footins}
   \renewcommand{\footnoterule}{}
  \end{minipage}
\end{table}
\end{document}

Answer 2

Ok, so after a lot of testing and looking through the manual for htlatex I've gotten it to work. It's not as intuitive as I would want it but it does an Ok job.

Here's the workflow for getting htlatex to work in Windows 7:

Installation

1. Download tex4ht
2. Unzip in a convenient directory (C:\tex4ht)
3. Add path under control panel (System --> Advanced tab --> Env. variables) under "system variables" Path add in the beginning C:\tex4ht\bin\ht\win32;
4. I installed ImageMagick and Ghostscript just to on the safe side
5. In the C:\tex4ht\texmf\tex4ht\base\win32 I changed the first entry to the MiKTeX tfm path: iC:\Program Files (x86)\MiKTeX 2.9\fonts\tfm

Converting to Word

1. Press Win+R and type cmd to go to command line
2. Go to the directory with the .tex file
3. Make sure your .tex filename doesn't contain any spaces (this seems to confuse the script even with "")
4. Write htlatex filename.tex 'html,word' 'symbol/!' '-cvalidate' to get a html file (it seems to work OK with just htlatex filename.tex but it's the recommended syntax, probably for a good reason)
5. Open word and open the html file created by htlatex in the same folder as your latex file
6. Copy and paste the table to any word-document

Here's a sample code of three different ways for creating table footnotes:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{ctable}
\usepackage{threeparttable}
\begin{document}

\begin{table}
  \begin{threeparttable}
  \caption{Table with footnotes after the table}
  \label{tab:test1}
  \begin{tabular}{llll}
  \hline
  column 1 & column 2 & column 3\tnote{1} & column 4\tnote{2} \\
  \hline
  row 1 & data 1 & data 2 & data 3 \\
  \hline
  \end{tabular}
  \begin{tablenotes}
    \item[1] tablefootnote 1
    \item[2] tablefootnote 2
  \end{tablenotes}
\end{threeparttable}
\end{table}

\begin{table}
  \centering
  \caption{Composition of AA2099}\label{2099comp}
  \smallskip
  \begin{minipage}{3.3cm}
    \centering
    \begin{tabular}{cc}
      \hline\hline
      Element &  wt\% \\  \hline\hline
      Al\footnote{PHTTTT!!!} &  bal \\
      Cu &       2.69 \\
      Li &        1.8 \\
      Zn\footnote{blahblah} & 0.6 \\ \hline
   \end{tabular}\par
   \vspace{-0.75\skip\footins}
   \renewcommand{\footnoterule}{}
  \end{minipage}
\end{table}

\ctable[caption={Just a ctable},
    label=my_ctable,
    pos=!tbp,
    ]
    {lrccrc}
    {
    \tnote[a]{Over 25 $kg/m^2$}
    \tnote[b]{More than 5 cigarettes/day}
    }{\FL
\multicolumn{1}{l}{\bfseries Variable}&
\multicolumn{2}{c}{\bfseries Crude}&
\multicolumn{1}{c}{\bfseries }&
\multicolumn{2}{c}{\bfseries Adjusted}
\NN
\cline{2-3} \cline{5-6}
\multicolumn{1}{l}{}&\multicolumn{1}{c}{Unadjusted}&\multicolumn{1}{c}{95\% CI}&\multicolumn{1}{c}{}&\multicolumn{1}{c}{Adjusted}&\multicolumn{1}{c}{95\% CI}\ML
{\bfseries Overweight}&&&&&\NN
~~No&1.00&ref&&1.00&ref\NN
~~Yes\tmark[a]&0.74&0.67-0.80&&0.69&0.63-0.76\NN[6pt]
{\bfseries Smoking}&&&&&\NN
~~No&1.00&ref&&1.00&ref\NN
~~Yes\tmark[b]&1.13&1.01-1.27&&1.15&1.02-1.29\ML
}

\end{document}

This produces after processing into a Word document:

As obvious in the picture there is an issue with the footnotes in table 2 where they end up at the bottom of the page. The threeparttable or ctable seem to be a better solution.