# How to fit big table

I'm a novice in LaTeX, started just few days ago, but I have to complete report in a few days and I'm asking for help. This is code for a table:

\begin{table}
\centering
\label{tab:t1}\
\footnotesize\setlength{\tabcolsep}{5pt}
\begin{tabular}{l@{\hspace{10pt}} *{11}{c}}
\hline
\multirow{2}{*}{Regions} & \multirow{2}{*}{Total}& \multicolumn{3}{|c|}{Types of forest canopy} & \multicolumn{2}{|c|}{Location of forest} & \multirow{2}{*}{Open type in Community Forest} & \multirow{2}{*}{Open type in private forest} & \multirow{2}{*}{Close type in Community forest} & \multirow{2}{*}{Close type in private fores}\\
\cline{3-7}
& &Open&Close&None&Community forest&Private forest& & & & \\
\hline
Chitwan& 183 & 28 & 153 & 2 & 179 & 4 & 27 &  1 &  151 & 2\\
Gorkha& 191 & 33 & 157 & 1 & 185 & 6 & 33 &  0 &  151 & 6\\
\hline
Total&374&61&310&3&364&10& \multicolumn{2}{c}{61} &  \multicolumn{2}{c}{310} \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{table}


But the table does not fit the page and I don't know what to do. I need this table on one page fitted by width like here:

• welcome to tex.sx, but please always provide a complete document including \documentclass and ending \end{document} It's hard to suggest ways of making something fit if we don't know the size of the thing it's fitting in to:-) probably \multcolumn{1}{p{2cm}}{Community forest} to allow line breaking in the heading is what you are looking for – David Carlisle Apr 11 '14 at 14:17

I see several possibilities

• Restructure your table. You could change column to rows (transpose), or you could combine some columns.
• Define columns with fixed width by using p{<width>}; this will force linebreaking. You can also use manual line breaks in the table header.
• Or reduce the font size in your tabular, by using

{\small
\begin{tabular}...
\end{tabular}
}


Available font sizes are \tiny, \scriptsize, \footnotesize, \small, \normalsize, \large, \Large, \LARGE, \huge, \Huge

• Or you scale the whole table to the size needed.

\scalebox{0.7}{ \begin{tabular}... \end{tabular} }


or with the \resizebox command

• use a landscape page for your table, by using sidewaystable from the package rotating.

Hope that helps.

• +1 for transpose -- if this is actually the whole table (which it may well be as it adds up) -- if this is 2 rows from a bigger table for clarity that's a different matter, and landscape might be a better option. – Chris H Apr 11 '14 at 14:45
• Welcome to TeX.SX! A tip: You can use backticks ` to mark your inline code as I did in my edit. – jub0bs Apr 11 '14 at 14:56
• Resizing a table is considered bad practise. – Skillmon Apr 4 '18 at 20:19