Row with invisible cells

Question

Is there any easy way to obtain something like this in LaTeX?

My guess was to try to make the first and third cell of the first row invisible, but then I lose the right and left border of the Main 1 cell... I didn't find any package that would allow to do this easily, so if you have any package name or trick (maybe it's fairly simple using standard LaTeX tables, I don't know), it would greatly help me.

Answer 1

No need of additional packages:

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{*{5}{|c}|}
\cline{2-4}
\multicolumn{1}{c}{} & \multicolumn{3}{|c|}{Main 1} \\
\hline
Title 1 & Title 2 & Title 3 & Title 4 & Title 5 \\
\hline
& & & & \\
\hline
& & & & \\
\hline
& & & & \\
\hline
\end{tabular}

\end{document}

The first row could have been written also in the following way (so as to have the complete number of declared columns):

\multicolumn{1}{c}{} & \multicolumn{3}{|c|}{Main 1} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{} \\

If you want to improve the quality of your table, then the booktabs package could be of interest (vertical rules won't now be allowed):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{booktabs}

\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{@{}c*{3}{c}c@{}}
\toprule
& \multicolumn{3}{c}{Main 1} & \\
\cmidrule(lr){2-4}
Title 1 & Title 2 & Title 3 & Title 4 & Title 5 \\
\cmidrule(r){1-1}\cmidrule(lr){2-2}\cmidrule(lr){3-3}\cmidrule(lr){4-4}\cmidrule(l){5-5}
& & & & \\
\midrule
& & & & \\
\midrule
& & & & \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}

\end{document}

Depending on the table contents, even some or all of the \midrules could be suppressed.