# Vertical numbering with multienumerate environment

I'm trying to get the numbering in the multienumerate environment to go vertically instead of horizontally. So,

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{multienum}

\begin{document}

\begin{multienumerate}
\mitemxx{item 1}{item 4}
\mitemxx{item 2}{item 5}
\mitemxx{item 3}{item 6}
\end{multienumerate}

\end{document}


Is there an obvious way to do this? I've tried a number of different ways of getting an enumerated list into a tabular environment with the item numbers aligned, to no avail so far. Thanks for any help.

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Hardly dare to disagree with @egreg, but multienum can do this if you help it by telling it how many entries are in the column (which it could do automatically on a second pass, but here I provide an argument to do that)

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{multienum}

\def\vmultienumerate#1{% number of entries in the column
\setcounter{multienumi}{-#1}%
\renewcommand\labelenumi
{\ifnum\value{multienumi}>#1
\else
\fi
\arabic{multienumi}.}
}

\begin{document}

\begin{multienumerate}\vmultienumerate{3}
\mitemxx{item 1}{item 4}
\mitemxx{item 2}{item 5}
\mitemxx{item 3}{item 6}
\end{multienumerate}

\end{document}

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Very nice trick! –  egreg Feb 26 '12 at 0:05
Perfect! Thanks. –  user12106 Feb 26 '12 at 0:12

It's impossible for multienum to do what you want, as it doesn't know in advance how many items you've got. Use multicol:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{multicol}

\begin{document}

\begin{multicols}{2}
\begin{enumerate}
\item item 1
\item item 2
\item item 3
\item item 4
\item item 5
\item item 6
\end{enumerate}
\end{multicols}

\end{document}

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Hi, I tried this. The problem is that it is not aligning the numbered items on each row. Each numbered item is a formula of varying vertical heights, and using multicol is causing the item numbers to not line up with each other. Of course, I may be missing something with the multicol environment... Sorry, should have added to my sample code enough information to make this clear. –  user12106 Feb 25 '12 at 23:57