Footnote in tabular environment

Question

I thought that footnotes would have only a problem with the table environment, but none of the answers in

• Footnotes in Tabulars?
• Footnote in table

seem to work for the tabular environment.

\documentclass{scrartcl}

\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{l}
Content\footnote{Footnote}
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

Answer 1

another possibility is with the footnote package and \makesavenoteenv{tabular}:

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage{footnote}
\makesavenoteenv{tabular}
\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{l}
Content\footnote{footnote text}
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

If one has both tabular-only environment and tabular inside table, it is possibile to load both \makesavenoteenv{tabular} and \makesavenoteenv{table} in the preamble, like this:

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage{footnote}
\makesavenoteenv{tabular}
\makesavenoteenv{table}
\begin{document}
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l}
Content\footnote{footnote text}
\end{tabular}
\end{table}
\begin{tabular}{l}
Content\footnote{footnote text}
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

So to have a more general solution.

Also, a fairly comprehensive list of solutions can be found inside the documentation for the tablefootnotepackage, starting from page 3, section "Alternatives".

Answer 2

For some reason (my preferred choice) the tablefootnote package only works if you wrap the tabular in a table float. A way around is to use \footnotemark and \footnotetext:

\documentclass{scrartcl}

\begin{document}    
before

\begin{tabular}{l}
Content\footnotemark\\
Content continued\footnotemark\\
Content continued further\footnotemark
\end{tabular}
\footnotetext[1]{Footnote}
\footnotetext[2]{Second footnote}
\footnotetext{Third footnote}

after
\end{document}

Note how manual numbering of all but the first footnotetext is necessary. In a longer document, an approach with manually decrementing and incrementing the footnote number might be more viable; that way, the only way you have to watch out for is decrementing by the correct number:

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\begin{document}    
before

\begin{tabular}{l}
Content\footnotemark\\
Content continued\footnotemark\\
Content continued further\footnotemark
\end{tabular}
\addtocounter{footnote}{-2}
\footnotetext[1]{Footnote}
\addtocounter{footnote}{1}
\footnotetext{Second footnote}
\addtocounter{footnote}{1}
\footnotetext{Third footnote}

after
\end{document}

Answer 3

You can also use threeparttable package to insert footnotes in the tables.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[flushleft]{threeparttable}
\begin{document}
\begin{table}[h]
\caption{Example of test session results}
\label{tab:test_results}
\centering
\begin{threeparttable}
  \begin{tabular}{|l|l|l|}
    \hline
    Mutants & CPU\tnote{1}     & Memory\tnote{2}    \\ \hline
    Mutant-1   & 23 & 15 \\ \hline
    Mutant-2   & 32 & 11 \\ \hline
  \end{tabular}
  \begin{tablenotes}
    \item[1] Measured in percentages.
    \item[2] Measured in kilobytes (KB).
  \end{tablenotes}
\end{threeparttable}
\end{table}
\end{document}

Output:

Answer 4

I insert footnotes manually at the bottom of the table, which is pretty simple and requires no additional package:

\begin{table}
\caption{The Table.}
\centering
  \begin{tabular}{lrr}
   \hline
          & Variable A & Variable B \\
   \hline
      Item 1        & 234.5 & 678.9 \\
      Item 2~$^{1}$ & 432.1 & 876.5 \\
   \hline
   \multicolumn{3}{l}{$^{1}$\footnotesize{Here is a footnote.}} \\
  \end{tabular}
\end{table}

Answer 5

If you use bidiftnxtra (a part of bidi package), all combinations of table and tabular will work. Ofcourse, this only work if you are using xelatex but the approach can be ported to other packages too:

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage{bidi}
\usepackage{bidiftnxtra}
\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{l}
Content\footnote{Footnote}
\end{tabular}

\begin{table}[h]
\centering
\begin{tabular}{l}
Content\footnote{Footnote}
\end{tabular}
\caption{This is a caption\footnote{Another footnote.}}
\end{table}
\end{document}

Answer 6

I particularly like @CountZero's answer, yet it may happen that your footnote mark is on a different page than your footnote text. In that case, you can move around the \footnotetext to solve that, but how do you become aware of it in the first place?

This code will issue a warning when that happens:

\documentclass{article}

% works with hyperref, too:
% \usepackage{hyperref}

% Footnotes in table with page-number check
\usepackage{refcount}
\newcommand{\myfootnotemark}{\footnotemark\label{fn:mark}}
\newcommand{\myfootnotetext}[1]{\footnotetext{#1\label{fn:text}%
        \edef\fnmark{\getpagerefnumber{fn:mark}}%
        \edef\fntext{\getpagerefnumber{fn:text}}%
        \ifx\fnmark\fntext\else\ClassWarning{}{footnote mark and text on different pages!}\fi}}

\begin{document}
    \begin{tabular}{l}
%       Table stuff \footnote{This does not work: the footnote is missing.}
        Table stuff \myfootnotemark
    \end{tabular}

% uncomment to see the warning:
% \pagebreak

\myfootnotetext{So we do this instead!}

\end{document}

It works only for a single \footnotemark/\footnotetext pair so far, but extension should not be too difficult and those who use this weird hack more than once in a document are hopefully apt enough to adapt my code accordingly :)

Answer 7

An alternative solution with talltblr environment of tabularray package:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{hyperref}
\hypersetup{colorlinks}

\usepackage{tabularray}

\begin{document}

\begin{table}[!htbp]
\centering
\begin{talltblr}[
  caption = {Long Long Long Long Tabular},
  note{a} = {It is the first footnote.},
  note{b} = {It is the second long long long long long long footnote.},
]{
  colspec = {XXX}, width = 0.8\linewidth, hlines,
}
 Alpha   & Beta & Gamma\TblrNote{a} \\
 Epsilon & Zeta & Eta   \\
 Iota    & Kapp & Lambdaa\TblrNote{b} \\
\end{talltblr}
\end{table}

\end{document}

Answer 8

The package nicematrix provides an environment {NiceTabular} which is similar to the classical {tabular} (of array) but this extra features.

• When the package is loaded with the key footnote or the key footnotehyper, the commands \footnote are extracted from the tabular (by using the corresponding package: footnote or footnotehyper).

• There is a command \tabularnote from notes which are composed under the tabular.

Demonstrating example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{height=10cm} % in order to have a smaller output (for this post)

\usepackage{booktabs,enumitem}
\usepackage[footnotehyper]{nicematrix}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\begin{document}

\begin{NiceTabular}{l}
\toprule
Content in the first row\tabularnote{A tabular note} \\
Some content in the second row\footnote{A footnote} \\ 
\bottomrule
\end{NiceTabular}

\end{document}

You need several compilations (because nicematrix uses PGF/Tikz nodes under the hood).

Answer 9

As also posted here, you can also use define a footnote outside the table/tabular by using a custom command marklessfootnote, and then refer to it within the table instead.

\newcommand\marklessfootnote[1]{
    \addtocounter{footnote}{1}
    \footnotetext{#1}
}

The marklessfootnote can then be referred to within a table using a regular \ref command, or the cleveref package command \cref with ease, also compatible with hyperref package.

Ref:

%... inside my doc
\marklessfootnote{My footnote \label{ftn:01}}
%... inside my tabular...
\textsuperscript{\tiny\ref{ftn:01}} % With commands to superscript the mark.

Cleveref:

Note to make Cref link the same style as the regular footnote, you can redefine the format as follows.

\crefformat{footnote}{#2\textsuperscript{\footnotemark[#1]}#3} %option to superscript mark.
%... %inside my doc
\marklessfootnote{My footnote \label{ftn:01}}
%... %inside my tabular...
\cref{ftn:01}