# longtabu with multicols?

I want to place a very long table into my document, i.e. a table which spans multiple pages. The table has a rather narrow width, so it should be set in multicolumn mode (2 or 3 columns). The text should be set in 1-column mode, of course.

For my tables, I use the "tabu" and "longtabu" tables. Unfortunately, longtabu does not work together with multicols. The error message is: "longtable not in 1-column mode..."

Is there any workaround?

The final table should look like in the sketch below. Please note how the entries should be ordered, and how the columns should be balanced on the last page of the table (although this is not absolutely necessary).

I'm grateful for any advice on how to achieve that!

• longtabu uses longtable which can't be used inside multicols as stated in its documentation. See tex.stackexchange.com/questions/45980/… or tex.stackexchange.com/questions/23488/… – egreg Jul 23 '13 at 10:28
• Sure, that's why I'm asking for a workaround or alternative. – kopierkatze Jul 23 '13 at 10:52
• In the linked questions there are workarounds – egreg Jul 23 '13 at 10:53
• Well, the workaround in the first question allows you to use longtabu in two-column-mode, but it does not add the longtabu headers! Neither at the column breaks nor at the page breaks. That renders longtabu rather useless.. – kopierkatze Jul 23 '13 at 11:21
• Use supertabular, which works inside multicols and you are done. Receipt: see the links provided by egreg. Where is the problem? – Keks Dose Jul 24 '13 at 9:59

Cals tables work to some extent inside multicols. The limitation is that you have to specify table breaks manually.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{multicol,cals}
\makeatletter
\begin{document}
\section{Multipage table (in a multicols in a table)}
\begin{calstable}
\colwidths{{1cm}{7cm}{1cm}}
\brow \cell{x} \cell{x} \cell{x} \erow
\brow \cell{x} \cell{
\columnsep=0cm\relax
% Force multicols to regard our \leftskip
% by pretending that we are a list.
\begin{multicols}{2}

\begin{calstable}
\alignR
\colwidths{{1.5cm}{1.5cm}}
\thead{\brow \cell{$n$}\cell{$n^2$} \erow}
\tfoot{\brow \cell{$n$}\cell{$n^2$} \erow}
\brow \cell{2}  \cell{4}   \erow
\brow \cell{3}  \cell{9}   \erow
\brow \cell{4}  \cell{16}  \erow
\brow \cell{5}  \cell{25}  \erow
\brow \cell{6}  \cell{36}  \erow
\tbreak{\break }
\brow \cell{7}  \cell{49}  \erow
\brow \cell{8}  \cell{64}  \erow
\brow \cell{9}  \cell{81}  \erow
\brow \cell{10} \cell{100} \erow
\brow \cell{11} \cell{121} \erow
\end{calstable}

\end{multicols}
} \cell{x} \erow
\brow \cell{x} \cell{x} \cell{x} \erow
\end{calstable}
\end{document}

• Thanks for this advice, but manually specifiying the table breaks is not an option in this case. – kopierkatze Jul 24 '13 at 13:56